


Nothing to Lose But Your Head

by Imagination_Parade



Series: Nothing to Lose [1]
Category: Grey's Anatomy, The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Brain Surgery, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Magic, Other, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3841924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagination_Parade/pseuds/Imagination_Parade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The solution to Cassandra’s brain grape lies not with magic found within the Library’s walls, but with science, in the form of Dr. Amelia Shepherd and Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. When Ezekiel finds Dr. Shepherd, Cassandra has a big decision to make, one that will affect her life and the lives of everyone around her. (primarily a Librarians story; eventual Jassandra)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Decision

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick things to know:
> 
> You can read this even if you're a Librarians fan who doesn't watch Grey's. Definitely. For sure. This is 98% a Librarians story. There are a few scenes with only Grey's characters, but they mostly talk about the Librarians crew, so not knowing a thing about Grey's shouldn't affect your ability to read and enjoy this story at all. Everything you need to know about Grey's is explained in the text.
> 
> I started writing this back in March, so let's just assume that is the setting for the beginning of this story (aka Derek is still alive and in DC working for the President.)
> 
> Every Grey's episode title is taken from a song. This one is "Nothing to Lose But Your Head" by the Augustines because some of the lyrics reminded me of Cassandra.
> 
> And every Grey's episode starts and ends with a voiceover monologue by (usually) Meredith Grey, so I've continued that tradition here as well, hence the first-person paragraph at the beginning.
> 
> Expect 5 or 6 chapters for this one. As always, nothing Librarians or Grey's is mine.
> 
> This was a ton of fun to write, so I hope you all enjoy reading it, too!

_As surgeons, we save people’s lives every day. But it’s not all one-in-a-million diseases and spectacular disasters. Preventative medicine exists in surgery, too. We cut to prevent a problem from occurring – to prevent a problem from getting worse. It’s routine to us, but to the patient, it might be the biggest leap they ever take. The surgery could change your life, or it could end it. It’s a hard concept to grasp – walk in feeling fine, sign forms listing a bunch of terrifying risks, and turn yourself over to an over-confident, scalpel-wielding surgeon just waiting to cut you open. So why do it? Why take that chance? Do you trade what’s left of your life for the possibility of more? For the possibility of better?  How do you let us wheel you into the uncertainty of the OR when it’s not a disaster yet?_  

The day had been saved, and the team was dispersing for the day, so Jacob Stone picked up a book and headed for the front door of the Annex, ready to call it a night. About halfway down the hallway, he heard an Australian accent calling his name in a hushed tone. Hurried footsteps followed the calls, but Stone kept walking, leaving the younger man’s attempts to obtain his attention unanswered. The pace of the footsteps quickened, and Ezekiel Jones finally appeared in front of him, folder in hand, cutting off Stone’s path to his truck.

“Stone, hey, hold on a minute,” Ezekiel said, catching his breath.

“Case is over, Jones,” Stone said, stepping around him. “I’m headin’ home.”

“I need to talk to you,” Ezekiel said, keeping up with him.

“It can’t wait?” Stone asked.

“I…” Ezekiel started. He hated to admit this, but he swallowed his pride and finished with, “I need your help with something.”

Stone walked a little bit faster, leaving Ezekiel a few paces behind him. With a stern voice, he replied, “If you’re stealin’ something, you’re on your own.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Ezekiel said. He stopped trying to catch his reluctant colleague and said, “It’s about Cassandra.”

Upon the mention of her name, Stone stopped heading for the door and turned to face Ezekiel. “What about Cassandra?” he asked.

“I think I…” Ezekiel started. He glanced over his shoulder, afraid the redhead in question might be following them out. The coast was clear, and Ezekiel said, “Look, I think I found something, but not here, okay? I don’t want her to hear.”

“Why not?” Stone asked.

“Please?” Ezekiel asked. “Can we go somewhere else?”

Stone sighed and grunted, “Come on; get in the truck.”

Later that evening, Stone and Ezekiel sat at a table in the corner of a local bar. Ezekiel munched on a bowl of peanuts that had been pulled towards him from the center of the table, and Stone’s beer sat forgotten as he poured through the file of research Ezekiel had compiled.

“You wanted to show me doctors?” Stone asked.

“Derek and Amelia Shepherd – brother and sister - they’re neurosurgeons… _world class_ neurosurgeons,” Ezekiel corrected. He chuckled to himself and added, “Their holiday gatherings must be awful.”

“And you’re showing me this because?” Stone asked.

“They, like, _specialize_ in inoperable brain tumors,” Ezekiel said, popping a peanut into his mouth. “And we know somebody who has one of those.”

“How did you even find these people?” Stone asked, pulling out a profile of Amelia that Ezekiel had printed from the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital website.

“I was doing some research,” Ezekiel started. Stone’s head shot up, shooting Ezekiel a disbelieving look. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never looked up Cassandra’s tumor?”

“I might’ve done a Google search,” Stone admitted.

“See? I don’t know what an oligodendroglioma is, and if something happens out in the field, knowing what it is could save my life,” Ezekiel said.

“ _Your_ life,” Stone muttered, taking a drink from his beer upon the reveal of Ezekiel’s slightly self-centered intentions.

Choosing to ignore him, Ezekiel continued. “Anyway, I was reading about these tumors, and it turns out that _a lot_ of people end up having surgery to treat them, so I was trying to figure out what makes her brain grape so special that that wouldn’t be an option, and you basically can’t do a search on neurosurgery without coming across the Shepherds. One of them’s even working with the _President_.”

Stone put down the printed research and rubbed his temple. “What exactly are you proposing here, Jones?”

“They say yes to people who have been told no all the time, and they succeed! They could help Cassandra,” Ezekiel said.

“Why are you talkin’ to me about this?” Stone asked. “You should be talkin’ to _her_. It’s Cassandra’s decision. It’s none of our business.”

“I don’t want her to know _until_ it’s a yes,” Ezekiel said. “She’s already had hope ripped away from her twice, and that’s just in the time we’ve known her.”

Stone sighed and took another drink of his beer, not wanting to think about how true the statement Ezekiel had just made was. He waved the beer bottle at Ezekiel and asked, “And how are you gettin’ a yes without telling her, huh?”

“I think you mean how are _we_ going to get a yes without telling her,” Ezekiel said. Stone shot him another look, and Ezekiel said, “Do you think I’d willingly share the credit for this triumph if I didn’t actually need your help?”

“What do you need?” Stone asked.

“Just…her brain scans,” Ezekiel said, shrugging as if that were nothing.

“Why the hell do you think I could get those?” Stone asked.

“I broke my arm when I was eight, and the doctor gave us a copy of the x-rays,” Ezekiel said. “So, I figure Cassandra probably has a copy of her MRIs. You went to her place to check on her after she went to the doctor a couple months ago. Did you see it?”

“I just went to make sure she was okay; she didn’t show me an MRI,” Stone said. He thought about it for a moment and added, “There was a big envelope sittin’ on her table. She shoved it in a closet as soon as I got there.”

“Closet?” Ezekiel repeated. “Near the front door?”

“In the hallway,” Stone said. He realized why Ezekiel was asking and said, “Damn it, Jones, I said I wasn’t gonna help you steal!”

“In this case, it’s more like _borrowing_ ,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll put them back after we meet with one of the Shepherds.”

“We?” Stone asked. “I have to go along with this?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve got an appointment.”

Ezekiel gathered the file of paperwork he had put together on Derek and Amelia Shepherd and started to walk away from the table.

“Uh, Jones,” Stone called. “You’re going to need help from one more person.”

 

“You want me to _what_?” Colonel Eve Baird exclaimed as Ezekiel finished his proposition.

Baird, Ezekiel, and Stone congregated on the upper level of the Annex. Cassandra Cillian was just one floor below them, standing at the center table, manipulating invisible equations in front of her eyes.  Ezekiel peered over the edge of the second floor to make sure Cassandra’s attention had not been grabbed by the unexpected shout as he shushed the Guardian. Cassandra thankfully hadn’t noticed.        

“Look, I don’t know much about this medical stuff, but I’ve watched enough TV with my family to know that a world class neurosurgeon will take one look at that MRI and know the skull they’re lookin’ at does not belong to a man,” Stone said.

“You’re right,” Baird said. “That is a problem. Maybe we should, oh, I don’t know, _not_ go to Cassandra’s neurosurgeon appointment without _Cassandra_.”

“That’s one idea,” Ezekiel agreed. “ _Or_ …”

“No, there is no _or_ ,” Baird interrupted. “I know you guys mean well, and it’s natural and wonderful that you want to help her. I wish I could help her, too, but you can’t do this. There are laws that protect people’s medical information. We don’t even know if she would _want_ surgery. If you want these doctors to look at her MRIs, you have to tell her, and you have to let _her_ make that decision.”

“I can’t do that,” Ezekiel insisted.

“Why not?” Baird asked.

“She thought the Serpent Brotherhood was going to save her, and they lied to her. Then, she was holding a magic sword that would have healed her in her hands, and she used that magic to save Flynn instead,” Ezekiel started. “And that’s just what _we’ve_ witnessed.”

“There’s no tellin’ how many ‘almost’ cures she’s had over the years,” Stone added.

“And I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to be one who dangles hope in front of her face if I don’t know for sure it’s not going to be ripped away again,” Ezekiel finished.

Baird was silent for a moment as she thought about what the men in front of her had just said. Finally, with a slight nod, she said, “Okay, you make a good point.”

Without missing a beat, Ezekiel whipped out his cell phone and said, “I’m sorry, can you say that again, maybe on camera this time?”

“In your dreams,” Baird said. “But this would be more complicated to pull off than you think. You can’t just waltz into a hospital and claim to be someone else.”

“You’re saying that like I’m _not_ an expert at making fake IDs,” Ezekiel countered.

“Of course,” Baird groaned. “But guys, as flattered as I am, I don’t know if I can still pass for Cassandra’s age.”

“Sure you can,” Stone said immediately.

“If it’s a problem, we’ll just say staring Death in the face every day has rapidly aged you,” Ezekiel said, earning him a glower from both Baird and Stone.

“You guys know if these doctors say yes, you will have to confess to both them and Cassandra that you went behind her back to do this, right?” Baird asked.

“Yeah, but I’m hoping all will be forgiven when the admission of debauchery is followed by, ‘hey, want to get that grape out of your head?’” Ezekiel said.

Baird sighed. “We really need to work on your tact, Jones.”

“Are you sayin’ yes?” Stone asked.

Baird looked up as if she were talking to the Library itself and grumbled, “Oh, I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“She’s saying yes,” Ezekiel boasted.

“If Cassandra gets mad, I’m blaming everything on you,” Baird said.

“That means you don’t get any of the credit if she _doesn’t_ get mad,” Ezekiel countered.

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Baird agreed.

“So you’re in?” Ezekiel asked.

Baird sighed again. “Yes.”

 

Meredith Grey peered into the windowless room as she walked down the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital hallway and found her sister-in-law twirling back and forth in a swivel chair, staring at a wall of brain scans in front of her. Meredith slipped into the room, returning the door to its almost-shut position behind her.

“There you are,” Meredith said.

Amelia turned around. “What’s up?”

“I’m between surgeries. Want to get out of here for lunch this afternoon?” Meredith said.

“Sure,” Amelia agreed. “Just let me finish up this consult.”

“What are you looking at?” Meredith asked. Amelia swiveled back around to look at the scans illuminated on the wall.

“Grade II oligodendroglioma in the frontal lobe of the left cerebral hemisphere. I don’t have her entire medical history yet, so I don’t know if she’s ever tried treatment before, but it appears to be really slow progressing. The woman was diagnosed as a teenager, so, assuming she had it for a year or two before the symptoms got bad enough…she’s probably been living with this thing for almost two decades. The scans you’re looking at are limited to the last 18 months, but it doesn’t look like it’s changed in that time frame,” Amelia said. She looked behind her and met Meredith’s eyes. “Want to sit in?”

“On a neuro case?” Meredith asked.

“For old time’s sake,” Amelia said. “Come on, I bet I’m more fun in the OR than Derek.”

Meredith wandered up to the scans to check them out for herself. “Aren’t these tumors usually considered inoperable because of the high morbidity risk?”

“Yeah, by people who aren’t as awesome as I am,” Amelia said. “Plus, I…I don’t know; I want to help. I like the people.”

“Yeah?” Meredith asked.

“I’ve got the woman and two guys in a room down the hall. They’re like the band of misfit toys,” Amelia laughed. “I spent maybe ten minutes with them before I came in here to check out the MRIs, and that’s all it took to know that those are three _very_ different people. Something’s up with them, though.”

“What do you mean?” Meredith asked.

“Haven’t figured that one out yet,” Amelia admitted. “They got a little weird when the questions about the tumor got a little specific, but I like them,” Amelia said. “You can tell they really care.”

Meredith’s phone began ringing, and she pulled it out of the pocket of her white lab coat. Her face contorted into a grimace as she sneered, “Oh, he must have known we were joking about him.”

“Derek?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah,” Meredith said. “I think I have to answer it.”

“Why?” Amelia asked.

“Because I’ve ignored the last four calls.” Meredith reluctantly touched the place on her phone to accept the video call, and Derek’s face appeared on her screen. She mustered up a smile and said, “Hi, Derek.”

“Hey,” Derek said. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, just standing here with your sister, looking at a brain tumor.”

“What kind of tumor?” Derek asked with interest.

Meredith described the tumor to him, restating the information Amelia had given her, and turned the phone around so Derek could check out the scan on the wall. A scowl crossed Derek’s face when she turned the phone back towards her.

“Amy wants to operate on that?” Derek asked.

“I think so,” Meredith said.

“Put her on the phone,” Derek said.

Meredith handed the phone to Amelia, mouthing an apology to her. Amelia rolled her eyes and held the phone up so her face would be in view.

“Hey, big brother; I can’t wait to hear your opinion on my patient,” Amelia said sarcastically.

“Are you out of your mind?” Derek asked sternly. Amelia simply sighed, knowing nothing she could say would stop the forthcoming rant. “You can’t operate on that. She’s young; she’s been living with it for a long time; she’s not in immediate danger. Why would you risk killing her under those circumstances?”

“She’s a synesthete, Derek. The tumor is amplifying it. She has full-blown sensory hallucinations, fainting spells, nosebleeds, and headaches on a regular, if not near-daily, basis,” Amelia said. “Why should she live with that if she doesn’t have to? Why should she live with a _tumor_ in her head if she doesn’t have to?”

“It’s not worth the risk, Amy,” Derek maintained. “You’re talking about a woman’s _life_. She could live with that tumor for another decade. Maybe more.”

“Well, I want her to live for another _five_ decades,” Amelia said.

Meredith popped into the back of the video frame and asked, “You don’t think it’s accessible?”

“Sometimes it’s not about whether surgery is possible,” Derek said. “Sometimes it’s about weighing the risks against the patient’s circumstances, something Amy’s never been very good at, by the way, and determining the best course of action from there.”

“Offering surgery _is_ the best course of action for her circumstances,” Amelia argued.

“In this case, I disagree. This girl does not need to risk this right now. We call it watchful waiting for a reason. Sometimes the best thing to do is _wait_ ,” Derek said.

Amelia groaned, just as she used to do when they were children and having an argument. “Seriously, Derek, how much experience do I have to have under my belt before you’ll stop second-guessing my every decision?”

“I don’t second-guess your every decision, just the reckless ones,” Derek asserted.

“You know what? I am the Head of Neurosurgery at this hospital, and I don’t need your permission to…” Amelia started.

“Oh, that’s very mature, Amy,” Derek said. “Really, you’re…”

Amelia hung up on him before he could finish his sentence. Meredith held back a laugh as Amelia put the phone on the table and sighed.

“Things are so much more peaceful around here when he’s not,” Amelia said.

           

“This was a bad idea,” Baird muttered as she sat on an exam table in the center of a small room. Stone stood to her right near a small window, and Ezekiel paced back and forth to her left.

“She has been gone a long time,” Ezekiel agreed.

“That’s actually probably a good thing,” Stone said. Ezekiel halted as both he and Baird turned to look at him, seeking an explanation. “I just figure if she had pulled out those scans and thought she couldn’t do anything, she would’ve come right back in here and told us so.”

Before anyone had time to ponder that possibility, Amelia Shepherd opened the door to the exam room, the envelope full of Cassandra’s stolen scans in her arms. She offered the envelope to Baird, who took it.

“The good news is the tumor is right on the good side of the border of what we would consider to be accessible,” Amelia said. “Because of its proximity to that line, surgery would come with a slightly elevated risk, but I am confident that I could successfully perform the procedure with no lasting damage.”

“Really?” Ezekiel asked with a big grin. Stone and Baird shared a hopeful glance as Amelia’s attention turned to Ezekiel.

Amelia nodded and looked to Baird again. “If you decide that’s something you’re interested in, I’ll need a complete medical history, and then we can talk more in depth about the risks and the procedure itself. The most recent scan in that package is about two and a half months old, so even though your tumor is slow to progress, I would like to do my own scan while you’re here so I can get the most up-to-date picture of what we’re working with.”

“You…you want to do that today?” Baird asked, her eyes slowly traveling to Ezekiel.

“Yes,” Amelia answered slowly, suspiciously watching the nonverbal encounter happening between the three people in the room. Ezekiel suddenly looked blameworthy, while Baird’s teeth clenched, and Stone let out a scoff. “I’m sorry; is there a problem?”

“Um…no,” Baird said. “No, we just…umm…”

She sighed as she realized she still hadn’t gotten any better at producing explanations on the fly and looked to Stone for help. He shrugged, also at a loss for what to say.

“We just didn’t really know that you’d want to do a scan… _today_ ,” Ezekiel said.

Amelia eyes bounced among the three people standing in her exam room, a confused expression on her face. She suddenly gasped, “Oh my god…” in the midst of a nervous laugh. “Oh, I knew it was something.”

“Uh…knew _what_ was something?” Baird asked.

Amelia looked directly at her and said, “You’re not Cassandra Cillian, are you?”

Baird, staying true to the words she spoke before agreeing to this plan, said, “Jones, I think she asked you a question.”

“That’s Colonel Baird,” Ezekiel admitted.

“And I’m assuming you don’t have a brain tumor?” Amelia asked.

“I hope not,” Baird replied.

“Well, that explains why you seemingly couldn’t answer any of my questions about the diagnosis,” Amelia said. She took a seat on a stool near the door. “So tell me about Cassandra.”

“You’re…not going to throw us out of here?” Ezekiel asked in disbelief.

“Nope,” Amelia said, leaving it at that.

“She’s our friend,” Ezekiel said. “And our colleague.”

“She’s had a couple moments of hope recently, but none of those options have panned out,” Baird continued.

“We didn’t want to do that to her again,” Stone finished. “She’s got that thing in her head, but she still manages to be the happiest person in just about any room.”

Amelia nodded, taking in the crestfallen looks of the three people sitting in front of her. “Which one of you loves her?” she asked.

They were all silent for a moment before Baird said, “I think it’s safe to say we all do.”

“Does Cassandra know you’re talking to me right now?” Amelia asked. Ezekiel admitted she had no idea. Amelia pointed to the envelope in Baird’s hands and asked, “Then how did you come to possess those?”

Baird realized she hadn’t thought to question that part of Ezekiel’s plan and shot him an accusatory look. “Yeah, Jones, how did you get these?”

“How quickly everyone forgets…” Ezekiel said with a dramatic pretend sigh. “I’m a thief… _world class_ …I got them from her closet around four o’clock this morning. She was fast asleep down the hall.”

“How did you know they were in her closet?” Baird asked.

“Stone pays attention,” Ezekiel said.

Stone looked at Amelia and said, “That’s pretty unethical, right?”

“This entire meeting is pretty unethical, but it sounds like your friend’s been jerked around a little bit, and you want to help her, so I get it,” Amelia replied.

“You’re not gonna report us or something?” Stone asked.

Amelia chuckled a bit. “No.”

“And if I bring her back here, you can definitely help her?” Ezekiel asked.

Amelia nodded. “If she doesn’t kill you before you can bring her back here, yeah. I think I can help.”

 

Cassandra stood at the center table in the Annex, wringing her hands against her chest as she processed what the three people standing across from her had just told her. She hadn’t said a word since Ezekiel finished his confession, and her friends nervously waited for the blank look frozen on her face to be replaced with a reaction. Her hands momentarily balled into fists as she pursed her lips. Cassandra finally let out a sigh, unclenched her fists, dragged the envelope containing her MRI scans off the table to hug it protectively against her chest, and walked away, heading into the main Library.

“Cassandra!” Stone called, immediately following her.

“Well, that went well,” Ezekiel said, turning in the opposite direction.

Baird grabbed his collar and yanked him back. She used her other hand to point towards the others and said, “Go.”

By the time they caught up to the others, Stone was standing on the stairs into the Library, and Cassandra was several feet in front of them, still on the move.

“Cassie, say somethin’,” Stone begged.

She furiously turned to face them, red curls striking her reddened cheeks as she abruptly changed directions. “What is the matter with you? All of you!” she screamed. She frantically shook the envelope in front of her and continued, “ _This_ is the most personal, the most _private_ part of my life, so who the hell are you guys to just hop over to Seattle and show it to some doctor I’ve never even heard of before?”

“I just thought…” Ezekiel started.

“No!” Cassandra screamed. “I don’t particularly approve of your methods for procuring things to begin with, but I never thought you would steal from _me_ , and I _certainly_ never imagined it would be my confidential medical records! I don’t think you understand what a _complete_ violation and betrayal this is, Ezekiel!”

Stone took a few steps towards her. Cassandra threw the envelope to the ground with a stomp of her foot that stopped Stone in his tracks.

“And _you_!” she screamed, turning her attention towards Stone. She gestured wildly with her hands as she yelled, and Stone tried to creep closer to her without her noticing, worried she was going to work herself into a hallucination. “I make one stupid mistake immediately after finding out that magic is real, and you walk around here all high and mighty and preaching trust and punishing me for my betrayal, and then you go along with _this_ , you big sanctimonious hypocrite!”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Stone agreed, grimacing at her words.

“What about me?” Baird asked, thinking it best for Cassandra to let everything out before offering a defense or trying to calm her down.

Cassandra sucked in a breath and put her hands on her hips as she turned her attention to the colonel. “You…well, I don’t know, but I know I’m mad at you, too,” she said.

Just then, Jenkins appeared in the doorway to the Library. “What on earth is all the yelling in here?” he asked. “Miss Cillian, I could hear you all the way in my lab.”

Jenkins’s appearance served as a calming force on Cassandra. She took a deep breath and let her hands fall from their defensive position on her hips. “I’m sorry, Jenkins,” she said. “If you knew what they did, you’d be screaming, too.”

“I have no doubt about that, but just try to keep it down,” Jenkins said. Cassandra nodded, and the older man headed back out the way he came.

Grateful, for once, that he didn’t care enough to stick around for the story, Cassandra took a deep breath and bent over to grab the envelope full of scans from its place on the floor. She held it delicately against her chest again, and let her eyes meet each of her friends’ in turn.

“Do you want to know the worst part?” Cassandra breathed, her voice finally beginning to shake. “If you had just asked me to meet with her, I probably would’ve said yes because I trusted you. All of you. That would’ve been enough.”

With that, she turned back around and headed deeper into the Library before any of them could actually see her start to cry. She heard footsteps behind her and Baird’s voice calling Stone’s name. Cassandra vaguely heard her tell him to give her an hour before she turned down one of the aisles and escaped from their view.

Stone turned around and said, “I didn’t expect her to be thrilled, but I didn’t exactly expect that reaction, either.”

Baird sighed. “None of us did.”

Ezekiel finally chimed in with, “She’s gonna do it, though, right?”

Stone scoffed in disbelief and shook his head. Baird glared at Ezekiel.

“I don’t know, Jones, why don’t you go ask her and see what she says?” Baird asked.

“Uhh...no thanks,” Ezekiel said. “She’s kind of scary.”

“Nevertheless, you _will_ apologize to her later, and you will _not_ say anything that would lead her to believe you don’t mean it, and then you can _gently_ ask her to _please consider_ talking to Dr. Shepherd,” Baird ordered.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ezekiel muttered.      

           

Forty-nine minutes passed before Stone found her sitting on the floor in a section of the Library filled with children’s books. She was leaning against the bookshelf, fingering the edge of her MRI envelope.

“Cassandra?” he said quietly. She glanced up at him, and his stomach twisted into a knot when he saw her bloodshot eyes and tear-stained face. Her eyelashes still looked wet, and she sniffled as she rubbed her cheeks with the sleeve of her purple sweater. “What are you doing in this section?”

“I thought math would be too obvious,” she replied.

“And you didn’t want to be found,” Stone finished.

“Not really,” Cassandra answered. After a few seconds, he asked if he could sit. She lightly tilted her head towards the empty ground next to her, and he slipped down to the cool floor, leaving a respectable distance between them.

“I’m sorry, Cassandra,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she replied. “Now I know how you guys felt when I betrayed you.”

“No, this was different. This was personal,” Stone said. He sighed and admitted, “This was worse.”

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“Watchin’ what the tumor does to you…it’s scary sometimes,” Stone said. “But after you got so close with Excalibur, we didn’t want to get your hopes up again. Our hearts were in the right place, Cassandra; you’ve gotta believe that.”

“I do,” she nodded. “I also still believe you’re a hypocrite.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Stone agreed.

She finally let herself meet his gaze, and they shared a small grin as a comfortable silence fell between them. Her eyes eventually fixed firmly upon the envelope in her hands as she raised it slightly and began twirling it around.

“Stone?” she finally asked.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“What exactly did Dr. Shepherd say?” she asked.

 

Amelia walked down the hallway of Grey Sloan Memorial; her usual resident Stephanie Edwards trailed close behind her. Amelia glanced over her shoulder and asked what was next on her agenda.

“You have a consult with Cassandra Cillian in Exam Room 3. She had an MRI this afternoon,” Stephanie said. “Cassandra…wasn’t she on your schedule for a consult last week?”

“It’s a long story,” Amelia laughed, heading for the designated room.

Amelia knocked on the door of Exam Room 3 and walked in to find the three schemers she had met the week before and a young redhead in a floral dress sitting on the exam table.

“Cassandra Cillian, I presume?” Amelia said.

“Dr. Amelia Shepherd, I presume?” Cassandra replied, surprised at how young the doctor herself seemed.

“That’s me,” she said. “This is Dr. Edwards, one of the residents here. Is it okay if she helps me out with your case?”

“Oh, of course,” Cassandra replied, more than happy to help a fellow scientist learn.

“Great,” Amelia said. “Now that we all know who everyone really is, I’m going to need to see an ID before we get started.”

Cassandra looked momentarily taken back and then leaned over the exam table, reaching for her purse on the floor. “Treacherous, deceitful…” she mumbled, shooting a look at Ezekiel. “I still can’t believe you…”

Amelia laughed. “Well, I guess we haven’t all been forgiven,” she said. “I was kidding about the ID, by the way. I’m glad you agreed to meet with me.”

“They said you think you can operate,” Cassandra said.

“Has anyone ever talked to you about surgery before?” Amelia asked.

“Not since the biopsy I had as a teenager,” Cassandra said. “Everyone just says it’s inoperable; it’s too close to…something or other. It’s too dicey.”

Amelia pulled out a printed copy of the new MRI and hung it onto the small x-ray reader on the wall. “I hear you’re kind of a STEM genius, so what do you think?”

“Oh, I don’t really…” Cassandra started. She sighed. “The aftermath of the diagnosis was a little traumatic, and I’ve kind of purposely remained ignorant about most neurological science. I don’t think I could tell you much beyond pointing out the tumor.”

“Understandable,” Amelia said. She pointed to the gray spot on the MRI.

“Is that the brain grape?” Ezekiel asked.

“Brain grape?” Stephanie asked.

“Ignore him,” Cassandra groaned with a roll of her eyes.

“Well, he’s right. This right here is what the oligodendroglioma currently looks like, and this,” Amelia said, placing her pen horizontal against the scan almost directly next to Cassandra’s tumor. “Is about where we draw the line of accessibility.”

“Does that mean it’s accessible?” Ezekiel asked.

“Barely,” Cassandra muttered.

“Barely counts,” Amelia said. “As I told your friends here, I believe it’s in accessible territory, and I’m confident I could remove it with no lasting damage.”

Amelia went on to describe the craniotomy procedure in detail, including the angle at which she would come at the tumor, where the incision would be made, and the image guiding technology that would be helping her along the way. She used an animation on her iPad to illustrate the steps and show Cassandra what the procedure would look like. Baird’s face contorted into a disgusted grimace, and Ezekiel’s eyes grew wide when the animation showed the skin and nerves of the head being peeled back to uncover the bone. When Amelia got to the part about removing a bone flap from Cassandra’s skull to access the tumor, Ezekiel audibly shuddered and stepped away from the screen.

“Oh, this was your magnificent idea, but you can’t take it, huh?” Cassandra sneered accusingly.

“To be fair,” Baird said. She was beginning to look a little unwell herself. “He’s not the only one who’s not loving the sound of all of this.”

“How are you doing back there, Cowboy?” Amelia asked Stone, who was sitting behind Cassandra on the edge of the exam table.

“I’m okay,” Stone promised, mimicking Cassandra’s cool demeanor.

Amelia finished her animation and asked if Cassandra or anyone else in the room had any questions. Baird, Stone, and Ezekiel looked to Cassandra to take the lead, and Cassandra looked up at Amelia.

“Why?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” Amelia asked.

“Every doctor I’ve ever seen has recommended that I be put on Watchful Waiting status. None of them have even, as far as I know, considered surgery to be an option,” Cassandra said. “So it’s just been a lot of waiting and a lot of MRIs and a lot of literal and figurative headaches. Why do you think you can successfully operate when all of the other doctors, including your own brother, have told me no?”

Amelia looked at Cassandra’s friends. “You told her Derek said no?”

“You didn’t witness the explosion,” Ezekiel said. “We’re not hiding anything from her ever again.”

“Two reasons,” Amelia said, turning back to Cassandra. “One, technology’s come a long way. Imaging, mapping, navigational tools, all of the things I mentioned I would use to help me during your surgery…the advances in these resources have increased the threshold for what is considered operable. A tumor that’s considered operable today may not have been considered operable a decade ago or even a few years ago. Yours falls into that category. Like with any new technology, a lot of the seasoned surgeons are more reluctant to try, my brother, sometimes, included.”

“Old way’s best?” Cassandra asked softly. Stone shifted uneasily behind her.

"That’s what they think,” Amelia said. “I think they’re wrong.”

“And the second reason?” Cassandra asked.

“I’m kind of a rock star,” Amelia said with a grin. “I’m better than my brother. That’s why I have his job now.”

“And that’s why he’s working with the President, too, right?” Cassandra replied.

Amelia laughed. “Are you always this sassy?”

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra said. “I don’t know where that came from.”

Amelia shook it off. “Oh, that isn’t the worst thing a tumor patient has said to me, not even close,” she said.

“That…wasn’t the tumor,” Cassandra admitted.

“Look, I’m not going to stand here and lie to you and tell you it’s not risky. It’s brain surgery. It’s risky. The location of the tumor makes it slightly more so than usual,” Amelia said. “But I’m telling you I can do it because I can do it.”

Cassandra processed Amelia’s confident assertion for a moment and then turned to Stephanie. “And what do you think?”

“I think you’re in the best hands you could possibly be in,” Stephanie said. “I’ve seen her. She’s a superhero.”

“What happens to my synesthesia if you manage to resect the tumor?” Cassandra asked.

“Nothing,” Amelia said. “The tumor is intensifying the effects of your synesthesia, not creating it. You were a synesthete long before you got the diagnosis, right?”

“Right,” Cassandra nodded.

“You’ll be a synesthete after, too. Numbers and letters will still look like colors.”

“And math will still smell like breakfast?” Cassandra asked.

“Seriously?” Stephanie asked.

Cassandra smiled and nodded. “Usually.”

“That’s awesome,” Stephanie grinned.

“That’s pretty cool,” Amelia agreed. “Nothing I do should affect that. You’ll probably even still see numbers and patterns as points in the space surrounding you.”

“Wait,” Stone asked. “Isn’t that part of the problem?”

“I’ve always seen numbers like that,” Cassandra said. “They just used to be…focused.”

“There isn’t an abundance of research concerning synesthesia, but from what I know, and from what you all have told me about Cassandra’s experiences, the tumor is not _doing_ any of it; it’s just affecting how her brain handles those anomalies and associations,” Amelia said. She looked at Cassandra again and said, “No more tumor just means you won’t have the tail spinning hallucinations and other physical symptoms holding you back anymore.”

Baird and Stone shared a look, mutually pondering the possibility of how powerful a tumor-less Cassandra might be under those circumstances.

Amelia gazed knowingly at Cassandra and said, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” Cassandra, a little embarrassed at having been caught, sheepishly nodded. “It’s okay to be nervous. I know willingly signing up for something like this when you, more or less, feel fine is daunting. It seems crazy. But think about it. You don’t have to decide right at this moment. We’re not going to do this today.”

“Okay,” Cassandra said.

“Anything else I can answer for you?” Amelia asked.

“I’m sure there is, but I’m having trouble thinking,” Cassandra admitted.

“That’s okay. Do any of you have any questions?” Amelia asked her friends.

“What kind of recovery time are we looking at here?” Baird asked.

“It’s long,” Amelia admitted. “A couple months, at least, until things feel normal again. She’d be here for three days, with a follow-up appointment about a week post-op, and then she’d need to come back at the three to four month mark. You guys are…Portland, right?”

“Right,” Baird said.

“So you’re close enough that you could go home upon initial discharge if you wanted to. I wouldn’t advise it, but we could coordinate with your local hospital in the case of a post-op emergency. A lot of out-of-town patients prefer to stay local at least until that first week is over. And she’ll need you; she’ll need help,” Amelia said. “Dr. Edwards will give you some information to look over, and you can talk it over and take your time making a decision.”

“Thank you for your time, Doctor,” Baird replied.

“My pleasure,” Amelia said. “Cassandra?”

“Yes?” Cassandra asked.

“Promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

“I promise.”

 

A few days later, Baird and Ezekiel, having arrived at the same time, entered the Annex to find a bewildered Stone sitting at a desk in the corner of the room. Jenkins stood next to Stone with a concerned look on his face. Baird and Ezekiel followed their worried gazes to the center of the room where Cassandra stood, still dressed in the previous day’s clothes, hurriedly running around the center table and muttering quietly to herself.

“Cassandra,” Baird said gently, moving towards the table. If Cassandra heard her, she didn’t let it show.

“Miss Cillian has been here all night,” Jenkins said with a hint of a disgruntled tone.

“Yeah, I got that, Jenkins,” Baird said.

The table was covered in books, paperwork, and hand-scribbled notes. The pamphlets Dr. Edwards had given them laid among neurological and surgical textbooks, chapters on determining statistical risk analysis, printouts from the Internet, and pages upon pages of Cassandra’s notes, equations, and drawings. She had taken over the entire table, running back and forth to see information on whatever subject popped into her head.

“Cassandra,” Baird said again.

“Grey Sloan Memorial had a 1.6 percent morbidity rate on elective craniotomy procedures last year,” Cassandra whispered, never missing a beat with her frantic pacing.  “One is red, and six is indigo; indigo and red make purple; purple like jelly.”

Stone stood from the desk and walked towards Cassandra. He held out his hand and said, “Cassandra, hey…you can do this. Focus.”

“Purple like grape jelly…with peanut butter and bread, and… _oh, yummy_ ; grapes, though…grapes are bad…grapes like the tumor in my head,” Cassandra continued.

“Cassandra,” Stone said again.

“The tumor in my head that Dr. Shepherd wants to remove,” Cassandra muttered. “If I could just figure out how many craniotomies Dr. Shepherd performed last year and then how many of those were elective…”

“I think she’s lost it,” Ezekiel said quietly.

Cassandra bolted around the table and grabbed information printed from the Internet about Amelia Shepherd. She furiously shuffled through it before taking a seat on a stool at the center table, tossing the papers into the air and, with a sigh, dropping her head onto the tabletop.

“I don’t know how to do this!” she cried. Her head still on the table, she whimpered, much more calmly this time, “How do I do this?”

“What am I missing?” Ezekiel asked, noticing the sympathetic looks on Baird and Stone’s faces.

Cassandra picked her head up from the table. A defeated look had replaced the mania from just a few moments earlier. “How do I make this decision? I’m…I’m not there yet,” she said softly. On that note, a trail of blood began trickling from her nose. She moaned again and swiftly dabbed it away with the back of her hand, embarrassed. “Though I guess it would be nice to not do _that_ anymore.”

“Have you slept at all?” Baird asked with concern.

“I can’t sleep. I can’t…” Cassandra said. “This _thing_ , this idea of surgery is just out there…unresolved, and I can’t…I can’t sleep.” Her nose started bleeding again, and Stone handed her a tissue. “Thank you.”

“What are you thinkin’?” Stone asked.

“Talk to us,” Baird said.

“I’m thinking that I actually like my life right now, and I still could live many more years if I do nothing, but if I have the surgery, I could live _longer_ and better…or I could stroke out and die in the OR. What would you guys do?” Cassandra asked, looking towards her friends with hopeful eyes.

“I haven’t really had to think about my mortality for quite some time, so I’m afraid I won’t be must help,” Jenkins replied. “But, for what it’s worth, you’re the most pleasant of you scoundrels that have ruined my peace and quiet.”

Cassandra’s lips curled into a tiny grin as she raised her shoulders slightly. Baird and Stone each shot Jenkins a glare.

“Thanks, Mr. Jenkins,” Cassandra said.

“Well, this sounds like something to be worked out amongst yourselves, so if you’ll excuse me,” Jenkins said, heading back to his lab.

“Colonel Baird?” Cassandra asked.

Baird shook her head slightly. “I like to think I would take that chance if I was in your position and someone was offering it to me, but I can’t make this decision for you,” she said. Cassandra nodded in understanding. “But Dr. Shepherd seems more than competent, with an impressive record. I have faith in her.”

“Stone?” Cassandra asked.

“Whatever you want, Cassie,” Stone said. “I’ll support you either way.”

“I think you should do it,” Ezekiel said with a scoff.

“Of course you do,” Cassandra sighed.

“You just said the morbidity rate for elective procedures was only 1.6 last year,” Ezekiel said. “That sounds good to me.”

“It’s not just that,” Cassandra said. “There are a lot of factors, like recovery time, and all the help I’d likely need...”

“Hey, no,” Stone said. “That’s not a factor. You’ve got us.”

“It _is_ a factor,” Cassandra said. “This is days…weeks, maybe _months_ , of doing things like waking me up to take medicine when all I want to do is sleep and fighting me to get out of bed and move so I don’t develop blood clots, and I won’t want to, and I might be mean, and I’ll need help with really _simple_ things like changing clothes or maybe even just standing up, and I need you guys to understand that. This isn’t just helping out a friend who has a fever for a day or two. This is more like taking care of an articulate toddler, at least in the beginning.”

“Cassandra,” Baird said seriously. “We’re talking about saving your life. If this is what you want to do, we’re in. All of us, we’ll make it work.”

Cassandra took a moment to let Baird’s words sink in before turning to the guys. Stone nodded in agreement.

“Damn right we will,” he agreed. “If this is what you want, we’ll take care of you after. Don’t worry about that.”

“Even you?” Cassandra asked Ezekiel.

“That’d be a pretty dick move to hand the surgeon to you and then not help after, don’t you think?” Ezekiel asked.

Cassandra fought back tears, touched by their willingness to support her. She looked at Baird and asked, “And I can keep doing this after, right?”

“Not for a little while, but you’re not a soldier, remember?” Baird asked. “This isn’t going to keep you out of the field forever.”

They all watched silently as Cassandra nodded and swiveled the stool she was sitting on to face the center table. With shaking hands, she pulled her cell phone from underneath a mountain of research and took Amelia’s card out of her pocket.

“Are you sure?” Stone asked quietly.

“No,” Cassandra said. “But I think this thing is going to stay out there, unresolved, unless I try, so…yes.”

Nobody bothered to move when she started dialing, and Cassandra didn’t ask them to leave. Stone sat down again on the nearest seat he could find, Ezekiel leaned against the doorway, and Baird stood next to Cassandra, carefully watching in case the younger woman needed a comforting hand. After a few minutes, Cassandra hung up the phone and shifted again to face her friends. Baird crossed her arms against her chest.

“Two weeks from Wednesday,” Cassandra said nervously. When she saw her own trepidation reflected on each of her friends’ faces, she forced a little smile and, with a shrug, said “It might be nice to be able to look in a mirror again.”


	2. The Hospital

Amelia Shepherd was confidently striding down the hallway when she passed Meredith, dressed in street clothes, near the elevators.

“Coming or going?” Amelia asked.

“Going,” Meredith said.

“Got another couple hours of fight left in you?”

“Why?” Meredith asked.

“Remember the synesthete my asshole brother told me not to touch?” Amelia replied.

“Yeah,” Meredith said. “Are you…?”

“Taking her tumor out in about half an hour,” Amelia boasted.

“I thought that was her name on the surgery board,” Meredith said. “Cillian, right?”

“Yeah,” Amelia said.

“Sure you’ve got the right Cassandra Cillian this time?” Meredith joked.

Amelia fake laughed. “Very funny,” she said. “Want to scrub in?”

“So you can have a witness when you brag to Derek later?” Meredith asked.

“Oh, come on, wouldn’t it be great to dip your feet back into the neuro pool on a case that Derek specifically told us not to take?”

“It’s tempting,” Meredith laughed.

“Seriously, though, I was going to let Edwards help with the resection, so I could actually use someone to keep an eye on the navigational system,” Amelia said. She put on a good show, but she still had a tendency to get nervous immediately before a surgery. “I told her I could do with no negative consequences, so if I screw this up, I’m never going to forgive myself.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll go tell the daycare I’m going to be a few more hours,” Meredith agreed.

“I’ll see you in there!” Amelia said.

Amelia turned down the hallway containing the patient rooms and walked into Cassandra’s. Cassandra was lying in the bed in a hospital gown, nervously twirling her fingers against her chest and looking at Ezekiel, who was entertaining the group with a story about a heist in Europe. Colonel Baird stood next to him, and Stone sat on the other side of the room, his chair pulled close to Cassandra’s bed.

“How are we doing in here?” Amelia asked.

“Okay,” Cassandra answered.

“Okay’s not bad,” Amelia smiled. “A nurse will be in soon to start an IV and get you ready to go to the OR, but I wanted to check in and see if any of you had any last minute questions.”

“Do you have to shave her head?” Ezekiel asked.

Baird sighed, rolled her eyes, and punched Ezekiel’s shoulder. Ezekiel cried out and gripped the hurt flesh. Amelia chuckled slightly.

“It’s a valid question,” Amelia assured them. “But no.”

“No?” Cassandra asked, the surprise evident in her voice.

Amelia handed Cassandra a small hand mirror and made her way over to the top of Cassandra’s bed. She touched the front left side of her head gently and said, “Her tumor’s about right here, so she might look a little bit like she’s ready to take the Capitol with Katniss Everdeen in a few hours, but her whole head? Barring any unexpected complications, that’s unnecessary.” The revelation made Cassandra smile slightly. Amelia looked down at her and asked, “Anything else?”

“Can I talk to you alone for just a minute?” Cassandra asked.

“Sure,” Amelia said. She looked at Cassandra’s friends. “Give us a second.”

Ezekiel and Baird started heading out of the room. Stone stood up and put his hand out, protectively separating Cassandra and the doctor.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Cassandra.

“Stone!” Baird called. Stone glanced between Cassandra and Amelia a few times before dropping his hand and reluctantly following the group outside.

“What can I do for you?” Amelia asked, taking Stone’s vacated seat.

“I know this is a teaching hospital, so I’m assuming you have an operating room or two with some sort of viewing mechanism?” Cassandra asked.

“A gallery, yeah,” Amelia confirmed.

“Don’t put me in there?” Cassandra asked. “I would never want to take a learning opportunity away from someone, but they…” She nodded towards the door and finished, “They are pretty good at finding a way into things they shouldn’t, security notwithstanding.”

“Oh, I can’t imagine that, considering the manner in which your case was brought to my attention,” Amelia sarcastically replied. The women shared a smile before Cassandra’s gaze dropped to her fingers again.

“I don’t want any of them to see me like that,” Cassandra said. “They wouldn’t be able to take it. They could barely handle the animation.”

“Nobody passed out; they did better than some.” Amelia and Cassandra both chuckled.

Meredith rapped on the door frame, still dressed in her street clothes. Amelia waved her into the room as Cassandra’s eyes widened slightly.

“Cassandra, this is Dr. Meredith Grey,” Amelia said. “She’s going to be assisting with your surgery today.”

“Why do I need a general surgeon?” Cassandra asked.

“She does her homework,” Meredith said, impressed.

“You don’t,” Amelia said. “I need someone to assist with the navigational aspect of the procedure while Dr. Edwards and I do the resection, and Dr. Grey has a fair amount of neuro experience.”

“Okay,” Cassandra said. She looked at Meredith. “You’re Ellis Grey’s daughter,” she said, referencing the famed and revered general surgeon.

“Yes,” Meredith said. “How did you know that?”

“Like you said, I do my homework,” Cassandra verified.

Amelia looked at Cassandra, and, with a nod and a serious tone, said, “No gallery; I promise.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra said.

Amelia and Meredith left Cassandra’s room and found her friends right outside, gathered around the information desk. Amelia introduced Meredith to the threesome, and, after greetings were exchanged, Meredith slipped away to go get ready for the surgery. Amelia turned to Cassandra’s friends and said, “You guys can stay with her until we take her up to the OR.”

“Great, I was just getting to the part where I evaded the cops,” Ezekiel said.

Ezekiel slipped quickly back into the room; Baird moved to follow him, but Stone gently grabbed Amelia’s arm as she passed.

“Don’t – don’t tell her to count down,” Stone said.

“What?” Amelia asked.

“When you get in there, with the anesthesia…don’t tell her to count down from ten or whatever it is that y’all do. Countin’ like that could send her into a hallucination, especially since she’s nervous. She’ll see ten and nine and every number in between, and then the next thing you know, she’ll be talkin’ about rain and red velvet cupcakes,” Stone explained.

“Rain and red velvet…” Amelia repeated, slowly processing the information Stone had just given her. She nodded. “Good tip. Thanks.”

“And if…” Stone started. He was about to tell Amelia that if anything went wrong in there, and Cassandra dies, so _help him god_ …but before he could get any further with his threat, Baird cut in, wrapping her arm around Stone, holding him back and steering him towards Cassandra’s door. She smiled and thanked Amelia before turning to Stone with a stern look on her face.

“Let’s not antagonize the person who’s about to cut into Cassandra’s skull, okay?” Baird asked.

“I was just…” Stone started.

“I know what you were doing, Stone,” Baird said. “Don’t.”

“I’m…” he started, not wanting to actually admit out loud to the nerves settling in the pit of his stomach.

“I know. We all are,” Baird said. “Most of all her, so go be with her until it’s time.”

They resumed their positions in Cassandra’s room, distracting her as a nurse came in to insert an IV in her arm and get her ready for the surgery. Finally, and much too soon, the nurse gave them a five-minute warning and told them to start saying their goodbyes.

“Don’t say goodbye,” Cassandra said quickly, terror in her voice, as the nurse disappeared from the doorway.

“Of course not,” Baird replied just as quickly.

“She shouldn’t have said that,” Stone muttered.

“Well, I guess I’ll go first,” Ezekiel said. He walked over to Cassandra and held his hand up for a high-five. She looked a little puzzled but raised her hand to meet his nonetheless. “You’ve got this, kid. We’ll see you soon.”

Cassandra smiled in relief. “I think that’s the best thing you could’ve said to me right now,” she said. “Thank you.”

Baird nodded and grabbed Cassandra’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “He’s right. You’ll be okay. This is a good thing,” she said, more for her own benefit than Cassandra’s. “Just know that we’re all with you.”

“I know,” she said with another small smile. Baird dropped her hand and stepped back, and Cassandra turned her head to Stone. His steely expression made her face fall. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothin’,” Stone insisted.

“Don’t lie to me,” she whispered. “You don’t trust Dr. Shepherd, do you?”

“I’m…I’m fine,” Stone said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair by her bed. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“So that’s a no,” Cassandra sighed with a shaky breath.

Stone could see her getting worked up, so he moved closer to her. “Hey, come on, don’t listen to me. I don’t trust anyone.”

He knew that was the stupidest thing he could’ve possibly said to her when she quickly responded with, “Right, even me.”

“Damn it, Cassie. You know I trust you. That’s behind us,” he said, verbalizing his changed feelings for the first time. “Don’t go in there thinking about that.”

At that, Amelia popped into the room, a team of nurses behind her. “Ready?” she asked.

Cassandra’s hand shot out and grabbed Stone’s. “Jake,” she said frenetically, her voice cracking. His head immediately turned from Amelia to her; that was the first time she had ever used his first name. “I’m really scared,” she admitted with a small voice.

He lifted her hand, wrapping both of his around hers. “I know,” he said tenderly. “Me too…but you’ll be alright. You have to be alright. We need ya out there, Cassandra.”

“But there are risks worse than death here,” she said quietly. “What if…”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at me. There is no what if. I’ll see you in a couple hours, okay? We’re all gonna be right here when you wake up.”

“Okay,” she whispered with a nod, his voice having a soothing effect on her.

“And Cass – the good memories, okay? Focus on the good memories if you get scared,” he said. “Do you think you can do that?”

She nodded again. He squeezed her hand one last time before letting her go. Cassandra looked at Amelia and, with a deep breath, said, “I’m ready.”

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” Amelia said.

The nurses behind her came into the room to wheel Cassandra’s bed up to the operating room. Amelia hung back, intending to follow them out. She turned to Cassandra’s friends before she left.

“It’ll be a few hours, but someone will be out to update you as soon as possible,” Amelia promised.

“Thank you,” Baird nodded.

With a nod, Amelia followed Cassandra up to the operating room, leaving the Librarians and their Guardian in a quiet, empty room.

“Should we have told her good luck?” Ezekiel asked dreadfully, the confidence finally drained from his demeanor.

“Cassandra or Dr. Shepherd?” Stone asked, his arms crossed tightly against his chest.

“Both?” Ezekiel replied.

“I hate this,” Stone mumbled.

“Let’s just go out to the waiting room,” Baird said. “It’s out of our hands now.”

“That’s why I hate this,” Stone said, exiting the room.

Ezekiel slowly followed him, and Baird looking up towards the ceiling. “It’s going to be a really long morning,” she sighed.

           

In the operating room, Amelia and Stephanie clustered around Cassandra’s skull, diligently working on accessing her tumor, while Meredith stood to the side, alternating between aiding in the navigational efforts and watching the action on the monitor behind Stephanie.

“So what do you think their deal is?” Meredith asked.

“Who’s deal?” Amelia replied.

“The patient,” Meredith said. “And her merry band of misfit toys. What if they’re one big crazy foursome couple?”

“Wh…how would that even work?” Stephanie asked, looking up from Cassandra’s head.

Meredith giggled. “Use your imagination, Edwards.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Stephanie reasoned, turning back to the task at hand.

“No,” Amelia said with a laugh. “They’re close, for sure, but it’s the cowboy. He’s the one who loves her.”

“Where’d you get that?” Stephanie asked.

“Yeah, wasn’t it the Asian guy who found you?” Meredith asked.

“Yeah, but I was in there when we brought her up to the OR, and the cowboy just had that _look_ ,” Amelia said.

“Oh, well, if he had the _look_ …” Stephanie said sarcastically. She dropped the act and said, “What look?”

“The look that people get when we take someone they really love up to the operating room,” Amelia said. “It’s half scared shitless and half dreams and hope and pixie dust.”

“Like Tinkerbell?” Stephanie asked.

“Maybe that was a bad parallel, but you know what I mean,” Amelia said.

“The others didn’t have that?” Meredith asked.

“The Colonel looked composed and hopeful. The kid, poor thing, looked like he’d just been smacked in the face with reality, but the cowboy…he had both written all over his face. Plus, he’s the one who told me not to let her count down when we gave her the anesthesia; that could’ve been a disaster,” Amelia said. “And that disclosure was followed by a threat, so that’s another tick in the _love_ column.”

“He threatened you?” Meredith asked with alarm.

“He tried, right after you met them; the Colonel stopped him,” Amelia said. “I don’t think he _knows_ he loves her yet, but I’d put money on it.”

“Do you think she loves him, too?” Meredith asked.

“I think he’s got a chance,” Amelia grinned.

“Didn’t you recently yell at me for trying to play matchmaker with my patients?” Stephanie asked.

"I’m not playing matchmaker; I’m just rooting for something that’s already there,” Amelia said. “Getting this grape out of her head can only help, though.”

“Grape?” Meredith asked.

“They call it her ‘brain grape,’” Stephanie clarified.

“We need to remember that one,” Meredith said. She looked at the woman on the operating table and said, “What about her family?”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask,” Amelia confessed.

“Really?” Meredith asked, seeing through that.

“ _Or_ I saw that the Colonel is her health care agent and decided there was probably a painful story there,” Amelia admitted. “The three people out in the waiting room right now…they’re her people. Let’s be able to give them good news, okay? Kill the lights!”

Stephanie inserted the dye that would easily reveal Cassandra’s tumor as the lights in the operating room were dimmed. The tumor in Cassandra’s brain slowly glowed green.

“Hello, tumor baby,” Amelia grinned, recycling the phrase from her recent triumphant surgery to remove a tumor that had encompassed most of the patient’s brain.

“Are you going to say that with every tumor from now on?” Stephanie asked, completely unamused and already tired of hearing it.

“Probably for a while,” Amelia declared.

"Okay, now I get the grape comparison,” Meredith said.

“It does kind of look like a grape,” Stephanie agreed.

“Let’s get it out of there,” Amelia commanded. “Lights!”

 

A small ding sounded as the elevator arrived and Flynn Carsen hurriedly stumbled out of the opening doors. He worriedly looked each direction a few times before his eyes locked onto his Guardian. Flynn wandered over to the waiting area and surveyed the scene in front of him. Ezekiel Jones sat still as a rock, staring into the space directly in front of his eyes. Jacob Stone paced back and forth at the end of the rows of chairs, and Eve Baird sat in the chair next to Ezekiel with a troubled look on her face, trying to calmly sip from the cup of coffee in her hands. She didn’t notice Flynn’s arrival until he reached the group.

“Flynn,” she finally gasped, looking up at him.

“Cassandra’s having _surgery_ , and no one told me?” Flynn exclaimed incredulously.

“I’m sorry,” Baird said. “She was so overwhelmed. I thought adding one more person to the mix might just be too much for her.”

“This is why you didn’t fight me when I insisted upon going off alone last week?” Flynn asked. Baird nodded in confirmation. He titled his head and pondered the circumstances for a moment. “I did find that to be a rather odd reaction from you, Guardian.”

“Don’t get used to it, Librarian,” Baird promised. When she couldn’t even muster up a proper grin at their pet names for one another, Flynn slid into the empty chair next to hers, the one he assumed once held Stone, and slipped his hand into hers. Baird’s hand tightened around his instantly, and Flynn realized that neither man had acknowledged his added presence at Grey Sloan Memorial.

“How are things going?” Flynn asked quietly.

“There hasn’t been any word on Cassandra yet,” Baird told him. Her head then turned in each direction as she looked at each of her charges. Ezekiel hadn’t so much as blinked. Stone was seemingly in his own little world. She locked eyes with Flynn again and sighed, “Not well out here. I’m actually getting a little worried about these two.”

“Ezekiel,” Flynn said, leaning over the Colonel to look at him.

“What if she dies?” Ezekiel finally said. His gaze remained firmly fixed upon the arbitrary point in front of him. “This was my idea. I brought her here. She…she could _die_ in that OR. What if she _dies_?”

Baird placed a comforting hand on Ezekiel’s knee. She opened her mouth to say something reassuring when Stone came storming over. He stopped halfway between Baird and Ezekiel and pointed accusingly at Ezekiel.

“Did he just say something about Cassandra _dying_?” Stone raged. He turned to Ezekiel. “Why would you think it’s okay to say somethin’ like that right now? Do you ever actually think about what you’re sayin’? She’s already been back there too long!”

Baird leapt up from her seat, passing her coffee to Flynn as she jumped between Ezekiel and Stone. Ezekiel finally looked up at her, and Stone almost growled as she made sure no one in the waiting room would get hurt.

“Dr. Shepherd said it would be a few hours before we heard something. It’s only been about 95 minutes since they took her to the OR, so we’re still well within that time frame,” she said firmly.

“Well, they need to hurry it up,” Stone grumbled.

“That’s how they make mistakes, you dumbass,” Ezekiel said.

“ _Guys_ ,” Baird said sternly. “ _This_ is not helping. Now, look, we are all scared, and we are all worried, but everyone just needs to sit down and wait and stop taking it out on each other because there is _nothing_ we can do.”

“I’m going for a walk,” Stone huffed.

He took off, choosing to pace up and down an adjacent hallway instead of back and forth across the waiting room; he wanted to get away from the group, but he didn’t want to miss any news about Cassandra. Ezekiel immediately sunk back into his own thoughts, staring into space again. The storm settled, Baird sunk back into her chair and clasped Flynn’s hand in hers again.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she admitted.

“You are?” Flynn asked.

Baird dropped her voice and revealed, “Cassandra went to a lawyer last week. She designated me as the one to make decisions about her medical care if she’s unable to make those decisions herself.”

“She respects you,” Flynn said.

Baird chuckled slightly and said, “I’m not sure that was quite the reason. She said Ezekiel’s too cavalier, and Stone’s too sentimental, and neither would be a good man in that kind of storm. They’re doing an excellent job of proving her right today.”

“That they are,” Flynn agreed.

“Anyway, she doesn’t want to be artificially kept alive by machines, and she thought I was the only one who would be able to make that call. I thought I could when she came to me with the paperwork, but now that we’re here…”

“What?” Flynn asked, rubbing soothing circles against the inside of her wrist.

“I don’t know if I could make that call,” Baird disclosed. “And I’m scared I’m going to have to find out.”

Flynn pulled her hand to his mouth and caringly brushed his lips across her skin. “You could do it,” he said. “You respect Cassandra, too, and you know that’s what her choice would be, and thus…”

“There you go with the thus-es again,” Baird interrupted.

“ _And thus_ , you could do it. I believe that,” Flynn asserted. “But you’re not going to have to find out.”

“I might,” Baird sighed. “There are a couple of surgeons younger than us wrist-deep in her brain right now.”

“She’ll be okay, Eve,” Flynn said, confidently.

Baird sighed and laid her head onto Flynn’s shoulder, allowing herself to close her eyes. “You’re staying, right?”

“You stay, I stay,” he whispered, tenderly kissing her forehead.

 

“Well, _that_ ,” Amelia said, dropping the surgical tools into the metal basin by the operating table. “Was flawless, if I do say so myself.” She let out a sigh of relief and stepped back from Cassandra.

“Shouldn’t you wait until she’s awake and talking to make that call?” Stephanie asked.

“We just fully resected her inoperable tumor without so much as a hiccup,” Amelia said. “It’s a win, Edwards.”

“I take it you want me to close?” Stephanie asked.

“You’ve earned it,” Amelia said. Stephanie nodded and got to work as Meredith took Amelia’s place to supervise. “And Mer, when you talk to Derek…”

“Brag a lot?” Meredith asked.

“Just make sure he knows his incompetent little sister proved him _incredibly_ wrong today,” Amelia said. “And then we can see what Mr. President thinks about _that_.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Meredith said. “Your head’s going to get so big, you won’t be able to fit through that door.”

Amelia laughed, stripped off her gloves, and said, “I’m going to go talk to her friends. Make it pretty, Edwards.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Stephanie said.

Amelia pushed her way backwards out of the operating room and headed down to the waiting area to find Cassandra’s friends. She spotted Ezekiel first, nearly chuckling when she noticed he still looked as shell-shocked as when she’d left them a few hours ago. The Colonel and a new arrival sat hand-in-hand next to him, the Colonel struggling to keep her eyes open, and the cowboy sat disgruntled opposite them, his body turned sideways in the chair so he could see if someone arrived. He was checking the watch around his wrist every few seconds, but he noticed Amelia first and immediately stood up. The new arrival nudged the Colonel awake, and they all met Amelia by the edge of the chairs.

“She’s fine,” Amelia smiled. She paused for a moment as all four friends breathed a sigh of relief. “Dr. Edwards and Dr. Grey are finishing up right now, and I’ll have a few quick tests to run when she wakes up just to make sure everything’s as it should be, but the surgery went spectacularly well, so I’m confident that she will be fine.”

“So the tumor in her head is…?” Flynn started, trailing off.

“What tumor in her head?” Amelia asked, playfully feigning confusion.

"You squashed the brain grape?” Ezekiel exclaimed, coming back to life.

Amelia chuckled again. “I don’t know if _squashed_ is the right word, but the surgery was successful. It’s gone,” she confirmed. She looked at Ezekiel and added, “You’ll have to come up with something new to torment her with.”

“I’m pretty sure I can do that,” Ezekiel promised.

“How long until she’s awake?” Stone asked, growing impatient with the joking.

“Should be within the hour,” Amelia said. “She’ll be in the neurosurgical ICU for the rest of the day, but if all goes well, the anesthesia doesn’t take long to wear off.”   

“Intensive care?” Baird asked, concerned.

“Standard procedure,” Amelia assured them. “She’ll be moved to a regular recovery room tomorrow.”

“When can we see her?” Stone asked.

“Soon,” Amelia promised.

 

Amelia silenced the incessant beeping on her pager as she rushed into Cassandra’s room in the ICU just forty minutes after leaving the Librarians in the waiting room. Cassandra was waking up in a panic, alarmed at the breathing tube still placed down her throat.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Amelia said quickly. “Let’s get this out.”

Cassandra gasped and coughed as Amelia removed the tube, and she sunk bank into the plethora of pillows behind her head, looking up at Amelia with barely-open eyes.

Cassandra took a moment to catch her breath and then asked, in a groggy whisper, “Did you get it?”

"I got it,” Amelia told her. Cassandra smiled faintly, looked towards the ceiling, and sighed in disbelief. Amelia pulled a little flashlight out of her white coat. She held it up to Cassandra’s eyes. “Follow the light for me.”

Amelia waved the light slowly in front of Cassandra’s face, and Cassandra’s eyes followed its path. With a nod and a verbal note of approval, Amelia turned the light off and replaced it in her coat’s pocket. When she turned back to Cassandra, Cassandra was grinning at the glass wall opposite her bed, her eyes open just a little bit wider. Amelia turned around and found all four of her friends clustered outside the room.

“Boy, you were right. They don’t miss anything, do they?” Amelia said. “We don’t normally let family in so soon, but…”

She waved Cassandra’s friends in. Stone entered first, followed by Ezekiel, then Baird and Flynn. Stone stood close to the head of Cassandra’s bed; Ezekiel leaned against a small cabinet against the wall, and Flynn and Baird stayed near the doorway.

“We saw you running through the hall,” Ezekiel said. “She may be Math Girl, but even I can do that equation.”

“Give me five minutes, and she’s all yours,” Amelia promised. She turned to Cassandra. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Cassandra Cillian,” Cassandra said, her voice still weak.

“Can you tell me _my_ name?” Amelia asked.

“Doctor Amelia Shepherd,” Cassandra answered.

“What year it is?”

“2015.”

"And who’s the President?”

“Barack Obama.”

"Do you know where you are?”

“Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.”

“I would’ve been satisfied with Seattle,” Amelia said with a grin. “How about your friends’ names over there?”

She went in order, starting with the man nearest her, her eyes moving down the line. “Jake…Jacob Stone, and that’s Ezekiel Jones, and Colonel Baird, and Flynn…hi, Flynn.” Her smile brightened as she finally noticed his presence in the room.

“Hey, kid,” Flynn grinned.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Amelia asked, holding up four fingers in front of Cassandra’s eyes.

“Green,” Cassandra muttered instinctively. She caught herself almost instantly and amended her answer to four.

Amelia faltered for a second before curling her fingers back up. “Normally, that would be cause for concern, but I don’t think I’ve ever operated on a synesthete before, so I’m gonna let it go. A few simple commands, and we’re done, okay?”

“Okay,” Cassandra sighed, already growing tired.

“Wave your fingers for me,” Amelia said. Cassandra did, waving all ten fingers. “Wiggle your toes.” The blankets at the end of the bed shifted. Amelia tilted her head towards Stone. “Smile at the cowboy up there.”

Cassandra tipped her head up slightly, grimacing as pain shot through her skull. She still manager to muster up a smile towards Stone. He smiled right back at her and reached for her hand. He stopped himself halfway and looked at Amelia. “Can I?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Amelia confirmed. “Cassandra, squeeze his hand.”

“Hey,” Stone said, smiling at Cassandra as he slipped his hand into hers. She squeezed gently. Amelia monitored the movement, but Stone nodded at the doctor anyway. Amelia took Cassandra’s other hand and asked her to repeat the motion, which Cassandra did.

“You’re perfect,” Amelia concluded. She gently touched Cassandra’s arm and said, “I’ll be back to check on you later.”

“It’s really gone?” Cassandra asked with lingering skepticism.

“It is,” Amelia said. “But how about we get a scan tomorrow, and then you can see for yourself?”

Cassandra nodded her agreement and asked, “Can I sleep or is this like a concussion where I have to stay awake?”

“You can sleep,” Amelia promised. “We encourage it. We’ll probably wake you up every few hours, though.”

“That’s okay,” Cassandra muttered.

“As for the rest of you…there’s only supposed to be two of you in here at a time, but…I won’t tell if you don’t,” Amelia said. “Just keep it down.”

They all nodded as Amelia headed out of the room; Baird and Flynn thanked her on the way out. Everyone was silent, nobody knowing quite what to say. Cassandra lay propped up in the bed, a mountain of pillows behind her bandaged head. The hair that had been spared in the surgery fell in red waves against her shoulder, and she was hooked up to more monitors and IVs than her friends could count in just a glance. Cassandra’s eyes fluttered, her brain residing somewhere in between conscious and unconscious, but Stone, who was still holding her hand, was the first one to notice her melancholy face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked gently. “Are you in pain?”

“Everything hurts,” Cassandra replied with a scoff, her voice sleepy. “But that’s not…”

“Then what’s wrong?” Stone asked.

Cassandra whined, “I don’t want any more scans. I hate the MRI machine. I’m so sick of all the scans.”

“They’re almost over,” Stone promised. “One more, that’s it.”

“Until the tumor grows,” Cassandra cried.

“There is no tumor, Cassie,” Stone said with wonder. “It’s gone.”

“My head doesn’t feel like it’s gone,” Cassandra said.

“They cut your skull open a few hours ago, so it’s probably not going to feel like sunshine and rainbows,” Ezekiel said.

Baird smacked him again, upside the head this time, which made Cassandra grin as Ezekiel cried out.

“Now we match,” Cassandra giggled as Ezekiel rubbed his sore head. Everyone except Ezekiel laughed quietly, and Cassandra added, “Sorry, the drugs might make me a little loopy.”

“But how will we know the difference?” Ezekiel asked, determined to treat her as normally as possible throughout this ordeal.

Cassandra pretended to be mildly offended before finally letting her eyes slip shut. “Can I go to sleep now?” she asked. “Are you guys leaving?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Baird promised. “Not until they make us, anyway.”

“Good,” Cassandra sighed. Her grip on Stone’s hand loosened as she let herself drift off to sleep.

 

Cassandra slept most of the afternoon, only really awakening when the nurses woke her up to give her medicine, check her vitals, or place a mechanism to keep her blood flowing and prevent clots around her lower legs. Every time, Cassandra protested in a dazed voice because everything hurt: her head from the surgery, her throat from the breathing tube, her arm from the IVs, her stomach from the food she wasn’t ready for. She managed to keep enough down to stay off of a feeding tube, but throwing up made her head hurt more. Every time a nurse woke her, one of her friends was there to distract her, hold her hand, or whisper words of kind encouragement. Cassandra was out of the most treacherous woods that came with neuro surgery, but she looked so small in her hospital bed connected to all the noisy machines, and despite Dr. Shepherd’s claims that all was going as it should, she didn’t seem, to them, to be doing too well, and their nerves had yet to really dissipate.

Much to their protests, they were finally kicked out of the ICU shortly after dinner that night. Overnight guests would be allowed in the normal recovery room, but Cassandra had to spend the night in the ICU alone. Baird called Jenkins to set up the back door somewhere in the hospital, but, as they were about to go through and return to the Annex, Stone refused to leave her in Seattle alone, even if he wouldn’t be able to be in the room with her. Baird had told him to suit himself, and she, Flynn, and Ezekiel returned to Grey Sloan Memorial bright and early the next morning. Stone was uncomfortably slumped in a chair in the waiting room. He clearly hadn’t gotten much sleep.

“Have you seen her yet?” Jones asked.

“No visitors before 9,” Stone grunted. “Something about rounds.”

They headed to Cassandra’s room at nine on the dot, stomachs dropping when they found her bed empty.

“Where the hell is she?” Stone asked.

“Right here,” Cassandra said, her voice a little more chipper than the previous day. She was walking out of the adjacent bathroom with the assistance of a nurse and returned as quickly as she could, which was not very quickly at all, to her hospital bed, dragging the IV behind her.

“You’re up,” Flynn said happily.

Cassandra groaned. “Yeah, that happened around 3 o’clock this morning,” she said. “Be glad you weren’t here for that.”

The nurse assured her that she was doing just fine and helped her settle the blankets back around her waist after she was situated in bed. Cassandra slumped against the pillows with a tired sigh; the walk utterly exhausted her.

“How’d you sleep?” Baird asked.

“Every time the pain medicine starts to wear off, I wake up,” Cassandra moaned. She glanced at all of her friends and added, “But I think Stone looks about as bad as I do.”

“Oh, no, trust me, he looks _way_ worse,” Ezekiel said.

“He stayed here last night,” Baird told her.

“What?” Cassandra asked. “Here in the hospital? Why would you do that?”

“Come on, Cassandra. I couldn’t leave you in the hospital in another state by yourself,” Stone said.

“But they wouldn’t let you see me,” she said.

Stone shrugged. “It’s okay. I thought someone should be here.”

Cassandra met his eyes with hers, but before she had time to say anything, Amelia appeared in the doorway.

“Good morning,” Amelia said. She cringed and said, “I know you guys probably just got here, but it’s time for that scan I mentioned yesterday.”

“ _No_ ,” Cassandra groaned; her feelings concerning more scans remained unchanged from the day prior.

“Forty-seven minutes of your life, and then I won’t do it again for four months; I promise,” Amelia said. “Well…I can’t really promise that, but I’ll try really hard not to do it again for four months.”

Cassandra crossed her arms and pouted like a petulant child and said, “I’ll sleep through the entire thing.”

“Good; I won’t have to worry about you moving,” Amelia said, granting permission. The nurse from earlier walked into the room with a special wheelchair. It had an extended back, allowing Cassandra to rest her head against the chair during the long journey down the hall.

Cassandra sighed, knowing she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, and looked at Stone. “Help me get up?”

“Sure,” Stone said. He pushed back the blankets on the bed and reached for her arm.

“Not that one; that one hurts,” Cassandra hissed as he went for the arm containing the IVs. Stone quickly reached for her other side and helped her out of the hospital bed and into the wheelchair. “Thanks,” she said softly.

Amelia promised someone would be out to tell them when Cassandra was back in her room and left with Cassandra for the Imaging Unit of the hospital.

“Alright,” Ezekiel declared. “Back to Stone’s new bedroom.”

“I may be tired, but I can still kick your ass,” Stone replied.

“Why does the waiting room make you so angry?” Ezekiel continued, purposely provoking him.

“I don’t know; it gonna turn you into a zombie again?” Stone teased.

“Pretty sure she can’t die from an MRI, mate,” Ezekiel said.

“ _Enough_ ,” Baird groaned.  She grabbed Flynn’s hand and said, “I’m so glad there’s someone sane here with me.”

“I’m the sane one?” Flynn asked. “What a frightening thought.”

 

A few hours later, Baird returned to the group in the waiting room. The three men sat in three sequential chairs, looking varying degrees of worried and irritated. Their heads turned almost simultaneously as Baird sat down across from them.

“Well?” Stone asked. “How the hell did a 47 minute scan turn into two and a half hours of radio silence?”

“They’re moving her out of the ICU,” Baird said. “They said we can see her when she’s settled…should be about another twenty minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, the nurse who had helped Cassandra in the neurosurgical ICU arrived in the waiting room and told them where they could find her. They traveled to the surgical floor and found her in a private recovery room. She was asleep again, but she was no longer hooked up to some of the machines she had been attached to in the ICU, and the bandages on her head had been changed to ones not quite as thick. Instead of a hospital gown, she now wore a nightgown covered in cartoon cats and a pink robe brought from home. The blood-pumping tubes were again wrapped around her legs, but that aside, much to their relief, the color was coming back to her cheeks, and she was beginning to look just a little more normal. Stone sat down in one of the chairs by her bed, claiming the first shift. The others were about to shuffle out of the room when Cassandra’s eyes flickered open.

“Don’t go,” she said faintly.

They all turned around and Ezekiel said, “I like the new digs.”

“How did the scan go?” Flynn asked.

"I don’t know,” Cassandra said. “I woke up when they were sliding me out of the machine, and I haven’t seen Dr. Shepherd since.”

As if on cue, Amelia knocked on the door and walked into the room, Stephanie in tow. Stephanie held an envelope much like the one Ezekiel had stolen from Cassandra’s closet just a few short weeks ago.

“Speak of the devil,” Ezekiel said.

“Me?” Amelia asked. “Oh no, you should be worshipping the ground on which I walk right about now.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked, voice filled with hope.

Stephanie pulled out the first scan and placed it into the illuminator on the wall. “This was Cassandra’s brain a few weeks ago,” she said. She pointed to the gray grape on the film and added, “Note the oligodendroglioma in her frontal lobe.”

Amelia pulled the second film out of the envelope and placed it next to the first. “And this is Cassandra’s brain now, from the MRI this morning.”

The second scan reflected what appeared to be a perfectly normal brain organ, free of gray tumors or other alarming anomalies. Everyone in the room was smiling except Cassandra, who was staring at the illuminated films with an expressionless look on her face. 

“Cassandra?” Baird asked.

Another few seconds of silence passed before a loud sob filled the room, and Cassandra broke down into tears. She cried as she scrutinized the familiar scan and the foreign-looking tumor-free scan, her eyes darting back and forth between them as her mind processed the reality of the traumatic procedure she had just gone through. Heavy tears splashed down her cheeks, and Stone tenderly took one of her hands in his.

“Hey, don’t do that; that’s gonna make your head hurt more,” he reminded her.

“It’s gone,” she cried. “Look, it’s gone.”

“You already knew that,” he said with a smile.

“Knowing it and actually seeing the evidence are two different things,” she asserted. She looked at Amelia and Stephanie and said, “You really got it all?”

“As far as I can tell, there isn’t a single abnormal cell in that head of yours,” Amelia said.

Ezekiel opened his mouth to refute that statement with a sarcastic quip, but Baird, swift on her feet, quickly placed her hand over the younger troublemaker’s mouth and quietly stated, “You are not ruining this moment, Jones.”

“What does this mean?” Cassandra asked, her tears subsiding.

“It means you can solve complicated equations without fainting, and you can think without your nose bleeding, and you might still get headaches, but that’ll fade as you get further away from the surgery,” Amelia said.

Across the room, Flynn caught Baird’s eye, and she nodded, letting him know their thoughts about what Amelia had just told them were on the same page.

“How am I…” Cassandra started, struggling to find the words to best ask her question. “I mean…should I be feeling better than I am right now?”

“No,” Amelia laughed. “God, you’re doing _great_ , Cassandra. Trust me, everything is going so well, it’s like you’ve got magic either in you or watching over you. Whatever it is, everything’s on track.”

Cassandra nervously put on a false laugh at the surgeon’s offhand remark. “Magic,” she repeated. “Like _magic_ could be a factor in the operating room…that’s funny.”

Amelia and Stephanie made their way out of Cassandra’s room, leaving the scans and a promise to check back in later behind. Once they were gone, Cassandra dropped the phony grin and looked at Flynn and Baird.

“Is that…possible?” she asked quietly.

“With the things that fall naturally out of my mouth these days, I’m not going to say no,” Baird said.

“Eve, can I talk to you for a minute?” Flynn asked.

Baird shot him a weird glance but followed him out into the hallway just outside of Cassandra’s room. Her eyes widened, prompting him to speak.

“Has anyone considered just how _powerful_ Cassandra’s likely to be without the visions and the other physical limitations that came with the oligodendroglioma?” Flynn asked.

“Can’t you just say _tumor_ like a normal person?” Baird sighed. “But yeah, it came up.”

"With her?” Flynn asked.

“No,” Baird said. “Dr. Shepherd mentioned that removing the tumor likely meant removing all of the negative, physical effects of her gifts. Stone and I had a brief conversation about what that Cassandra might look like.”

“It’s going to be _remarkable_ ,” Flynn said. “Without the hallucinations, without anything holding her back, Cassandra’s going to be…”

“Our best asset,” Baird finished. “I know.”

“It also makes her more vulnerable than she’s ever been,” Flynn said.

“What?” Baird asked.

“More vulnerable to the magic that’s been released into the world,” he finished. “A mind as formidable as Cassandra’s holds the potential for great gallantry, but with that also comes the capability of great malevolence.”

“ _Cassandra_?” Baird asked with great doubt. 

“You saw her with the Apple of Discord,” Flynn said.

“I also saw her give up her chance to avoid this very painful, very scary experience to save you mere _days_ after meeting you,” Baird said. “And that action didn’t come from the influence of some ancient artifact. That was _her_.”

“That woman’s inside of her,” Flynn insisted.

“You’ve happened to see her at her worst; I see her at her best. We can’t discount all the good in her for one or two early indiscretions,” Baird reasoned.

“No, of course not,” Flynn said. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?” Baird asked.

“I’m saying she’s susceptible. Cassandra is about to discover how truly exceptional she is. She has always viewed her mind as a curse; she’s never been allowed to see it as anything else, but it’s not a curse anymore. It’s her greatest gift and her greatest weapon, and she’s going to need her Guardian.”

“I’m _your_ Guardian,” Baird said.

“Nonsense; you’re _their_ Guardian,” Flynn insisted. “I got along just fine without one.”

“Flynn,” Baird said.

“She’s going to need _both_ of us to help her navigate this change before we can safely send her out into the field alone,” Flynn concluded.

“Well, lucky for us, she’s benched for the next four months or so, so we have plenty of time to figure that out,” Baird said. She started to head back into Cassandra’s room, lest Cassandra worry she had said something wrong, when she realized Flynn wasn’t following her. She turned again and noticed the worried expression on the Librarian’s face. “You’re scared.”

“What?” Flynn asked. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Jones froze, Stone turned into someone with some serious rage issues, and you are _panicking_ about something that isn’t even likely to happen. It’s a bit of a delayed reaction, but that’s probably my fault, since you didn’t know what was going on until yesterday,” Baird concluded. She took his hands in hers and stood opposite him. “I saw her, okay? I saw her _with magic_ in an alternate timeline. She was cured, and she had learned how to harness magic on top of the brilliance that already lies within her. The world was in shambles, she had all the power in the universe at her disposal, and she _helped people_. They didn’t fear her; they _respected_ her. She _saved_ them. That is the core of who she is. This change is as a part of her recovery as anything medical, as far as I’m concerned, so of course we’ll be there to help, but malevolence? Cassandra? Not in this timeline.”

“That confidence is rather alluring, you know?” Flynn flirted.

Baird raised her eyebrows and slyly smiled at him. “Well, you knew what you were doing leaving them in my hands. That was a wise decision you made, Librarian.”

Flynn glanced down the hallway. “Do you think there’s somewhere around here we could…” he pondered. “An on-call room, perhaps?”

“Later,” Baird promised with a wink. She gestured towards Cassandra’s room with a nod of her head. “I don’t want the kids to worry.”

 

Ezekiel made a run to a deli down the street, and they all had lunch together in Cassandra’s room. Cassandra spent more time staring fondly at the four people who surrounded her hospital bed than she did eating, and, when lunch was over, Flynn stood up, kissed the back of Cassandra’s hand, and bid the group adieu.

“You’re not going out on a case, are you?” Ezekiel asked.

“Oh, this is a different kind of mission,” Flynn promised. “Now, if my math is correct, and Cassandra, you can help me with this one, you’ve only got about another day and half in here, am I right?”

“That’s right,” Cassandra said. “That’s what Dr. Shepherd said, anyway.”

“And then you have another appointment with her next Thursday?” Flynn asked.

Cassandra suddenly looked a little lost. “Well, I don’t know. I mean…maybe…I know there’s an appointment a week after the surgery, which was on…which was how many days…” She started trying to count the days on her fingers. The doctors had warned them that the post-operation medicine could carry with it the potential to temporarily wreck havoc with Cassandra’s short-term memory and attention span, so Baird gently cupped her palm around Cassandra’s fingers before the younger woman could get frustrated.

“That’s right,” Baird confirmed.

“So where are we going for those in between days?” Flynn asked. “Through the door?”

“Absolutely not,” Baird said firmly at the same time Cassandra whined, “Oh, please, no.”

“Are you crazy?” Stone asked. “That’s way too harsh for her right now.”

“So are we driving; are we flying; are we riding; are we staying?” Flynn asked in a rapid-fire manner. “What are we doing?”

The room was silent for a moment as all four of its other occupants realized there wasn’t even a semblance of a post-hospital plan in place.

“Oh crap,” Baird groaned.  She looked at Cassandra. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Cassandra replied, bewildered. “I seem to have put about as much thought into that question as the rest of you.”

“Not to worry!” Flynn declared. “I will take care of everything.”

“You don’t have to do that by yourse…” Baird started.

Flynn interrupted her with a finger against her lips. “I’ll see you later,” he insisted. He turned to Cassandra and, with a wink, said, “Stay out of trouble, kid.”

Cassandra smiled, and with that, Flynn was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and thanks for the comments so far! I really appreciate it :) Quick question for you guys - are these chapters too long? I wrote this as one gigantic story, and now I'm having a little trouble splitting it for online posting. This one's right at 8k words. Should I make the chapters shorter?


	3. The First Day "Home"

When it was time for Cassandra to be discharged from the hospital, she sat on top of the hospital bed, dressed in bright colored yoga pants and a loose-fitting t-shirt. They were all clustered in the room waiting for Amelia to come in with Cassandra’s medicine and the mountain of discharge paperwork. Ezekiel sat on the bed with her, happy to see her finally disconnected from all of the hospital machines. Stone stood against the wall, and Baird obsessively checked her phone, as no one had heard from Flynn since his after-lunch departure a day and a half earlier. Amelia and Stephanie strolled into the room with cheery dispositions and paperwork in hand.

“Ready to get out of here?” Amelia asked.

“A little nervous about being out of here, actually,” Cassandra admitted.

“That’s normal,” Amelia assured her. “But I think you’re in good hands.”

She explained all of the different medicines Cassandra would need to take, their potential side effects, and the strict post-op medication schedule she would need to adhere to before handing the medicines over to Baird. Stephanie showed Cassandra where to sign on the discharge papers. When everything was in order, Amelia gathered the paperwork and asked if anyone had any final questions for her.

Cassandra glanced nervously back at her friends before turning to her doctors. She asked, in a diminutive voice, “How long do you think I have?”

“Until what?” Amelia asked.

“Until the tumor grows back,” Cassandra asked.

Baird, immediately realizing she wasn’t either kidding or still in denial over the results of the surgery, froze right away, her attention turning from trying to locate the Librarian to the girl sitting uneasily on the bed. Stone also realized the reality behind her question and crossed his arms against his chest, his face hardening into a frown.

“It’s gone; you saw the scan,” Ezekiel said certainly.

Cassandra couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him when she said, “This type of tumor tends to reoccur.”

“It might not,” Amelia said, jumping in as quickly as she could. She attempted to diffuse the tension that instantly filled the room with Cassandra’s statement; suddenly before her sat one very resigned patient and three astonished friends who all looked between Cassandra and her doctors with varying degrees of anguish and condolences.

“How long?” Cassandra asked again.

"It’s gonna grow back?” Ezekiel asked incredulously. “All of _this_ , and it’s just going to happen again?”

“No, we don’t know that,” Amelia said. “It _could_ , yes, but Cassandra’s tumor was very slow to progress, so _if_ it comes back at all, it would likely take years.”

“But how many years?” Stone asked heatedly. “Two? Five? Ten?”

Amelia sighed sympathetically and said, “It may never come back at all. I am as confident as I can be that I got all of the abnormal cells. She had a one hundred percent resection, so that means there is nothing in her head to multiply right now.”

“But it could still come back?” Ezekiel asked.

Amelia realized that it didn’t matter what she said at that point; they had already made up their minds as to which part of the discussion to focus on, so she switched gears a bit and said, “Don’t think about that right now. Focus on this week’s victory.” She looked at Cassandra and said, “You are, right now, tumor-free for the first time since you were a teenager, and that makes this a pretty damn good day.”

Cassandra smiled faintly. “You’re right,” she said. “That does feel pretty great.”

“If it comes back, you’ll come right back to me, and we will figure out what to do, but don’t worry until there’s a reason to, okay?” Amelia said. Cassandra nodded. “So I’ll see you in a few days. Where are you headed until then?”

“Umm…” Cassandra stuttered. She looked to Baird for an answer.

“About that…” Baird started, trying to conceal the fact that they had no idea where they were going or where Flynn had gone.

As if on cue, Flynn walked into Cassandra’s soon-to-be-vacated room pushing a wheelchair. He parked it near the bed, bowed towards Cassandra, and said, “Your chariot awaits, your highness.”

Cassandra giggled, and Amelia grinned and said, “Oh yeah, you’re going to be fine.”

A nurse came in to see Cassandra out as Amelia and Stephanie said goodbye for now. Baird helped Cassandra stand from the bed and sit down in the wheelchair, and Flynn insisted upon doing the honors of wheeling her out. Outside the hospital doors was a taxi van large enough for all five of them to ride in. Cassandra grinned a bit at being outside for the first time in three days, despite the gray clouds in the sky and the gloomy tone to the atmosphere around her. The driver came around to open the doors, and Ezekiel helped Cassandra climb up into the front seat while Baird and Flynn climbed in the back.

Stone gestured to the driver and pulled him aside. “She just had brain surgery,” Stone said. “So I’m going to need you to drive like she just had brain surgery.”

“Meaning what?” the driver asked.

“Meaning she’s going to feel every bump and every brake and every little minor thing on the road that you or I wouldn’t think twice about,” Stone pointed out.

“We drive post-op patients all the time,” the driver said. “You’re just going to a hotel around the corner.”

“Still,” Stone said, pulling a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket. “Respect what she’s been through, okay?”

The driver nodded, taking the money and shoving it into his own pocket. Stone went to join his friends in the van, and the driver rolled his eyes, chalking Stone up to another crazy loved one.

Despite the driver’s best efforts, Cassandra moaned with every bounce or shake of the vehicle. She pressed her head into the back of the passenger’s seat and closed her eyes, willing it all to be over soon. She winced as the van came to a stop again, but this time, Baird touched her shoulder to let her know the stop was their destination and not another stop sign or stoplight.

Cassandra’s eyes widened when she opened her eyes and discovered the taxi driver had pulled up in front of a very nice looking hotel just a few long blocks away from the hospital. Ezekiel helped her out of the car, asking if she was alright, and she looped her arm through his with a small nod as they slowly followed an excited Flynn inside the lobby. Baird carried Cassandra’s bag, and Stone brought up the rear. Flynn took them up to the fourth floor and used a hotel keycard to let them in to one of the rooms.

“Wow,” Ezekiel said as they entered the suite.

“Nice work, Librarian,” Baird said.

Flynn eagerly gave them a tour of the suite. It had everything they would need, and plenty of things they wouldn’t, though Ezekiel was quick to point out that the video game system attached to the living room television was, in fact, essential. Stone walked out of the bedroom.

“One problem, Flynn,” Stone said. “There’s only one bed.”  Flynn pursed his lips and tilted his head in contemplation.

“There’s…a couch,” Flynn replied. He had only really been considering Cassandra when he booked the room. “It might pull out.”

“It’s fine,” Cassandra said with a wave of her hands. “There’s only one bed in my apartment, too, and it’s smaller than this one. I can share. It’s not a big deal. What’s in the bags?”

She pointed to a cluster of shopping bags on the aforementioned couch. Flynn walked over to them and picked them up one-by-one.

“Pillowcases, extra pillows, towels, baby shampoo, a heating pad in case anything hurts too much, bandages, and pajamas that don’t go over your head,” Flynn said. Cassandra almost sighed in relief and looked at Baird.

“Gosh, there’s so much we didn’t think of,” she said.

“Good thing we have backup,” Baird grinned.

“Flynn, this is all wonderful, but I can’t afford a room like this. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the part of the hospital stuff that my insurance won’t cover,” Cassandra said, slightly embarrassed about her impending financial troubles.

“Well, that’s easy,” Flynn said. “You’re not!”

“What?” Cassandra asked, still holding on to Ezekiel for support.

“Librarians _die_ , remember? We’re pretty prone to death; it comes with the job,” Flynn said. “Thus, the Library may have found it in its best interest to keep one of its finest alive for as long as possible.”

Cassandra stared at him dumbfounded for just a moment before her face crumbled and she launched herself, as best she could four days post-op, into Flynn’s arms. He returned her hug right away, and she cried with gratitude into his shoulder.

“Hey now, remember what Stone said yesterday about the crying?” Flynn said, gently rubbing her back.

Cassandra pulled away and nodded, wiping away her tears. “Thank you,” she cried.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” Flynn said. Her grip on his arms tightened a little as she squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced.

“Oh, that was really stupid,” she said. “I think I need to…not be vertical anymore.” Flynn helped her sit down on the couch, and she leaned over, resting her head in her palms with a pained look on her face.

“Did you move too fast?” Flynn asked.

“Uh-huh,” Cassandra groaned. “I’m really dizzy.”

“Do you need someone to…” Flynn started.

“Just give me a minute,” she promised. “But speaking of that, who’s staying today?”

“I have to go,” Ezekiel said quickly. “I have to go back to the Annex.”

Baird and Stone both shot disapproving looks of disbelief at how rapidly he was trying to escape accountability in his direction, while Flynn looked a little confused at his fervor for leaving Seattle. Ezekiel realized that had come out wrong, and put on a guilty grin.

“I just have this project,” Ezekiel said. “I need the Library, and I might need his help.”

Ezekiel pointed at Flynn upon his last statement. Baird looked questionably at Flynn, and Flynn shrugged, indicating he didn’t have the slightest clue what Ezekiel was getting at. Stone continued to glare at the younger man, and Cassandra, oblivious to everything happening in the room around her, continued to hold her head on the couch.

“Okay, I don’t know what’s going on, but I was planning on staying today anyway, so you go do whatever it is you need to do, and I don’t think I want to know about it,” Baird said.

“I’m stayin’, too,” Stone said.

Goodbyes were exchanged, Flynn passed out hotel key cards to everyone, and Ezekiel called Jenkins to have the Back Door set up somewhere within the hotel. Flynn and Ezekiel left with a request to keep them updated, and Cassandra gingerly tried to stand up from the couch. Baird hurried over to her, helped her stand, and held Cassandra’s arm for stability.

“Bedroom?” Baird asked.

“Yeah,” Cassandra replied. “How long until you wake me up to take the medicine? You know you have to wake me up because it’s very important that I…”

“I’ve got an alarm set on my phone; don’t worry,” Baird assured her. “You’ve got a couple hours, at least.”

Once Cassandra was settled in the king-sized bed in the bedroom, Baird joined Stone in the suite’s living room. He was stretched out in a recliner, already engrossed in a show on the History Channel. Baird sighed and lay down on the couch, her eyes drifting shut.

“You can go get some books from the Library if you want,” Baird offered. “She’s going to be asleep for a while.”

“Maybe later,” Stone muttered. “You going to sleep, too?”

“Kind of hoping for it,” Baird admitted. “Why does everything with hospitals have to happen so _early_?”

 

A clap of thunder roused Baird from her sleep just slightly less than an hour later. When her eyes slowly opened, she was met with the sight of Stone, who had also drifted off, blinking himself awake as well. Stone glanced outside the window behind him and then met Baird’s gaze.

“That get you, too?” Stone asked.

“Yeah,” Baird said. Amid the rain outside, she thought she could hear a tortured mewling in the background. “Do you hear that?”

Stone frowned. “What is that?”

Baird’s eyes widened as she realized the cries were coming from the other room in the suite. “Is that _Cassandra_?”

Baird and Stone leapt off their respective pieces of furniture and swiftly traveled into the bedroom. Cassandra lay, sobbing, flat on the mattress in the dark, curtains drawn shut. She was curled up on her side, on the side of her head that remained untouched by the operation.  Her hands were clutched around her ears, and her eyes were squeezed shut. Baird reached the bed first, getting down on her knees to be even with Cassandra’s level.

“Hey, you can’t…you’ve got to keep your head elevated, remember?” Baird asked. Her hands hovered over Cassandra’s body in an attempt to figure out how to best maneuver her into the right position.

“The mattress is better at blocking the noise,” Cassandra whispered between sobs. A clap of thunder sounded again, and she let out an excruciating howl.

“It’s the thunder,” Baird realized.

“The rain was bad enough, but then the thunder started, and it’s like it’s reverberating around in my skull,” Cassandra cried.

At that, Stone disappeared from the bedroom. Baird’s instinct was to call after him, but Cassandra’s cries stopped her. Stone reappeared in the doorway just a few moments later, pulling on his shoes.

“Where are you going?” Baird asked.

“I’m gonna run down to a drugstore and get her some earplugs,” Stone replied. “They said she could be sensitive to noise; we shoulda already had ‘em.”

“Will that help?” Baird asked Cassandra.

“It’s worth trying,” she said.

“Go,” Baird told Stone. He was out the door almost faster than Baird’s brain could register. Thunder sounded again, and Cassandra whimpered, bringing Baird’s attention back to her. “Oh, god, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you,” Cassandra said. “But can you maybe talk quieter?”

“Of course,” Baird whispered. “Cassandra, you really need to sit up a little bit.”

“I don’t know if I can move,” she admitted. She sobbed and added, “I’m so tired.”

Cassandra lay in the middle of the mattress, so Baird sat down on the side and reached across Cassandra to stack a few pillows in her lap. She thumped her fingers against the top of the pile and softly said, “How about just to here, okay?”

Cassandra nodded and pushed herself up, laying her head where Baird’s hand had tapped. Baird knew Dr. Shepherd probably wouldn’t approve of that level of elevation, but it was better than flat against the mattress. Cassandra slipped her hand underneath her head to cover that ear and leaned into it when another clap of thunder sounded across the Seattle sky.

“Seattle only reports approximately seven days of thunder a year,” Cassandra said, trying to glance at Baird with teary eyes. “I guess it was about time for something to go wrong, right?”

“No, don’t think like that,” Baird said, placing a soothing hand on Cassandra’s arm. “It’s spring, remember? April showers and whatever.”

“It’s March,” Cassandra reminded her.

“Close enough,” Baird shrugged.

“Even though this is statistically unlikely, what if it does this all week?” Cassandra asked.

“Then we’ll go home,” Baird said. “Three hours in a car can’t be as bad as this.”

“Oh god, they both sound pretty bad,” Cassandra whined.

“Hang in there,” Baird said, soothingly rubbing Cassandra’s arm.

Stone returned twenty minutes later with a box of earplugs and an umbrella. “Forgot one of these, too,” he said. He pulled off his wet sweatshirt as Cassandra shoved the earplugs in place and lay back down, replacing her hands against her ears.

“Yeah, we were so focused on the surgery, we didn’t do a great job preparing for after,” Baird admitted. She glanced at Cassandra, who still lay in her lap, and asked, “Is that better?”

“Maybe a little,” Cassandra said.

It took a little under ninety more minutes for the thunder to subside and the storm to blow over, and Cassandra remained unfortunately awake the entire time, shuddering each time the thunder echoed in her brain. Stone and Baird stayed in the bedroom with her to keep her distracted and to keep her tears away.  When the thunder stopped, Cassandra fell asleep almost immediately, fully exhausted from the events of the morning and the distress from the storm. Baird stayed in the bedroom with her, slipping back to sleep as well, and Stone wandered back out into the living room.

A shrill alarm rang from the phone sitting on the coffee table just fifty-three minutes after Stone returned to the recliner and the television. He picked up Baird’s phone and read the alarm’s name.

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” Stone groaned to no one in particular.

Stone silenced the alarm and walked the phone into the bedroom. Cassandra, no longer lying on Baird’s lap, slept peacefully on one side of the bed, while Baird slept on the other. Stone shook Baird awake and held the phone in front of her face as soon as she sat up. Baird sighed and hung her head.

“So that means what I think it means?” Stone whispered.

“We’ve got to wake her up,” Baird said.

“We can’t wake her up after this mornin’; are you serious?” Stone asked.

“We have to, Stone,” Baird said, climbing out of bed.

“Can’t the painkiller wait another hour or two?” he asked as they headed out to the suite’s kitchen where Baird had left all of Cassandra’s medicines.

“It’s not just the painkiller,” Baird told him, pulling the pill bottles out of the bag one by one. “This one keeps her brain from swelling, and this one prevents seizures, and this one stops…something bad from happening…or not happening…or…”

“Alright, I get it; we gotta wake her up,” Stone accepted. “This is gonna suck, Baird.”

“Can’t say I’m looking forward to it,” Baird agreed.

Cassandra started whining almost as soon as Stone started attempting to wake her up. They tried to kindly tell her it was time to take her post-op meds, but they only received groggy groans in return. Stone put his hand out to gently jostle her again, but she was faster and robustly smacked his arm away from her.

“Stop it; don’t touch me,” Cassandra hissed, her eyes shooting daggers in his direction.

“Four pills, that’s it,” Stone promised. “You can even take them all in the same swallow.”

“I don’t care,” she said. She closed her eyes and turned her head again, signaling her intentions of going back to sleep.

“I think you’ll care if your brain explodes,” Stone irritably replied.

“Okay, that was uncalled for,” Baird said, stepping in between Stone and the bed. In the time it took for Baird to sternly look at Stone, Cassandra had rolled onto her side and curled her hand underneath a pillow. Baird finally noticed, climbed onto the bed, grabbed Cassandra’s side, and said, “Oh, no, you don’t; wake up.”

“Leave me alone!” Cassandra begged, and the wounded tone of her voice almost made Baird want to comply.

“Look, I know you know you have to take these on time, so just do it, and then you can go back to sleep,” Baird promised.

She placed the little plastic cup of pills into Cassandra’s hand and curled Cassandra’s fingers around it, thinking a bit of independence might spur her into obedience. Stone reached for the water bottle on the nightstand as Baird moved away, and, with a frustrated groan, Cassandra threw the cup of pills towards the wall. Baird gasped; Stone sidestepped the projectile, the cup crashed into the wall, and its contents spilled across the bedroom floor. Baird walked around the bed to pick the pills off of the ground. As she stood, Stone leaned in.

“I’m about _this close_ to shoving ‘em down her throat, and I think between the two of us, we could…” Stone quietly started. Baird cut him off.

"We are not going to hold her down and shove them down her throat… _yet_ ,” Baird said. “I’m just…I don’t know what to do.”

Stone racked his brain for a moment and then sat down on the bed next to her. “Cassandra?” he asked. She didn’t respond. “Alright, I know you’re awake, so just listen to me, okay? Before you decided to do this, you warned us that part of helping after was waking you up to do things you wouldn’t wanna do, and we agreed to do that. Now we’re holdin’ up our end up the bargain here, darlin’, so I need you to wake up and help us help you.”

Cassandra opened just one eye and looked at Stone. He gave her a few seconds, but she showed no signs of intending to do anything more than look at him.

“We can take you back to the hospital, and Dr. Shepherd can hook you back up to an IV, if that’d be more to your liking,” Stone continued.

At that, Cassandra’s other eye opened, and she used her hands to slowly push herself into an upright position. She held out her hand, and Baird hesitated.

“Are you going to throw this again?” Baird asked.

“No,” Cassandra promised. Baird handed the cup of pills to her again. Cassandra rattled it around a bit and said, “I’m supposed to take these with food.”

“Right,” Baird said.

She hurried out to the kitchen that Flynn had left nearly fully-stocked and came back with a package of crackers. Cassandra did what she was supposed to do and slumped back against the pillows, arms crossed against her chest. She looked at Baird and Stone; a mix of shame and annoyance colored her face.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Baird asked.

Rather than responding, Cassandra threw back the covers, reached for Stone’s arm to help her climb out of bed, and slowly started walking away. Baird reached for her as she passed, and Cassandra put her hand up.

“I’m going to the bathroom; I don’t need help,” she insisted.

“Okay,” Baird said, putting her own hands up in surrender. Before Cassandra could cross the threshold from the bedroom to the bathroom, Baird turned and said, “Hey, do you want to go for a walk after you’re done?”

“No!” Cassandra called.

“Okay, maybe later,” Baird replied, deciding to force that issue at another time. She turned back around to face Stone, who was still sitting on the side of the bed.

“Really?” Stone asked.

“Well, it was worth a shot!” Baird defended.

The following two attempts at a walk down the hallway later that day were also rebuffed, and Baird, out of utter frustration, slipped back into her well-worn and familiar role as a military leader, sternly commanding Cassandra to get out of bed. Naturally, her no-nonsense attitude set off an already-overly-agitated Cassandra, whose head still throbbed from the added pain brought on by the morning storm. Cassandra grew so annoyed that she ended up unconsciously pacing around the bedroom, gesturing madly with one hand while she ranted about how she was not some military school child that Baird could control or treat that way. Her pacing was so slow that it was almost laughable, as she was talking about three times faster than she was moving, and Cassandra spent most of the argument with her hand against the wall to steady herself or take a break, but for the most part, she was moving all on her own.

They argued simultaneously, making what either of the women were saying nearly incomprehensible to Stone, who sat awkwardly on the bed, taking in the scene before him. He grinned a little as Cassandra, for the first time, seemed like her normal, albeit angrier, self before finally deciding to step in. He broke up the argument, and Baird retreated to the corner, while Cassandra immediately reached for him, seemingly only just having realized that she had been walking back and forth around the room. He helped her reach the bed, and she sunk onto the mattress with a deep breath. Stone deciding to start the talking down process with the woman wrapped around his arm.

“She’s just tryin’ to keep you healthy, alright?” Stone reasoned. “She doesn’t mean to treat you like a solider; it’s just…none of us really know what we’re doing here.”

“I know,” Cassandra muttered, breathing at an elevated rate.

“You alright?”

Cassandra nodded. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“No; that was good,” Stone said. He turned to Baird and looked at his watch. “And that went on for about eight…maybe nine minutes, so between that and this morning and walking around the suite today…how about we say she’s good?”

“That seems reasonable,” Baird agreed.

“Alright,” Stone muttered.

           

The strong vibrations of a cell phone against the bedside table woke Baird from her slumber the next morning. Silently willing the notification to be _anything_ but an alarm to wake Cassandra up, Baird rolled over in the bed she was sharing with the younger woman and grabbed the phone. Flynn’s face flashed on the screen, and she answered with a smile as she made her way out of the bedroom.

“Hey, Librarian,” she answered.

“Hello, Eve,” he said. “How are things going in Seattle?”

Baird nodded a good morning to Stone who was making breakfast in the kitchen and let her body fall onto one of the kitchen counter’s barstools with a groan. “Before the surgery, she told us the first few days would be like taking care of an articulate toddler,” Baird told him, turning the speaker phone on so Stone could join in. “Turns out she wasn’t so far off. I think her new favorite word is _no_.”

“She’s pretty fond of _leave me alone_ now, too,” Stone added.

“Hothead Stone has become the voice of reason, though,” Baird added.

“Well, I ain’t gonna sit around and let you women kill each other,” Stone said.

“You’re the one who wanted to shove the pills down her throat,” Baird reminded him.

“Sounds simply spectacular,” Flynn said sarcastically. “Hmm…three _s_ ’s…nonetheless, I’m calling to propose a trade.”

Flynn, thinking Baird and Stone might want a day back in the Library or simply back at home after almost four whole days in Seattle, offered his and Ezekiel’s caretaking services. Baird and Stone looked at each other over the phone that was lying flat on the counter.

“I can’t see Jones fightin’ or forcin’ her to do anything,” Stone commented. Baird made a face and pointed silently at the phone, indicating that she couldn’t see that working with Flynn, either. Stone nodded in agreement.

“I don’t think I can repeat yesterday, Stone,” Baird admitted.

“So go home,” Stone said. “I’ll stay.”

“By yourself?” Flynn asked through the phone. “I’m happy to help.”

“I think it might be better if it’s just me,” Stone theorized. “Yesterday was two of us, and one of her, and I was thinkin’ she might’ve felt a little ganged up on.”

“That’s a plausible theory,” Flynn agreed.

“Are you sure?” Baird asked.

“If I need help, I’ll call,” Stone shrugged. “Go home; we’ll be fine.”


	4. The Rest of the First Week

Stone nearly jumped out of his skin when he finished plating his breakfast, turned around to head to the table, and found Cassandra leaning against the counter behind him. She tried and failed at not looking too amused by Stone’s fright.

“ _Man_ , you’re quiet,” he said. She chuckled. “Hey, you got up by yourself!”

“The bedside table helped,” she admitted.

“Still,” he shrugged. “What are you doing out here?”

“I heard voices,” she said. She looked around the suite. “Are you alone?”

“Baird went home; it’s just me today,” he said.

“Is that because I was mean?” she asked, a guilty look crossing her face.

“Nah,” Stone said. “It was a hard day for everyone. You hungry?”

She nodded, and he handed his plate over to her. Cassandra slid onto one of the barstools and swung her legs back and forth as she ate. When Stone had fixed up another plate of breakfast, he joined her at the counter and looked down at her legs.

“You know that’s not gonna get ya out of walkin’, right?” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “I know,” she sighed.

“What do you say we call a truce?” he suggested.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You don’t like bein’ forced to do things, and I don’t like making you do it, but we both know it’s gotta happen,” Stone said. “So today, I’ll try to be a little more patient if you can try to be a little more agreeable. Sound fair?”

“Sounds fair,” she agreed. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “You don’t got to apologize, Cassandra,” he said. “This is new for all of us. I’ve got a big family, but nobody’s ever had anything like this done, and Baird…well, I think she’s as isolated from her folks as you and Jones seem to be.”

“I’m not making it easy on you,” she recognized.

“You don’t feel good,” he shrugged. “And none of us should expect you to.”

“Well, thank you for letting me off the hook,” Cassandra said. “But I should still apologize to Colonel Baird later.”

After breakfast and medicine, Cassandra and Stone decided to watch a movie in the living room, as Cassandra decided she needed a change of scenery. Stone insisted she sit in the recliner in an effort to keep her from laying flat on the couch, and he picked something classic and easy-to-follow from the hotel’s list of OnDemand movies. Despite the simple plot, Cassandra lost the story less than twenty minutes in. Ten minutes later, she gave up trying to figure out what was going on and curled into the blanket Stone had thrown across the recliner, mindlessly watching the characters on the screen. Fifteen minutes after that, she was asleep.

When she woke up a few hours later and headed for the hotel bathroom, Stone decided to take the drill sergeant aspect out of making sure she stayed well. Instead of forcing her to get up and go for a walk, he thought he might have more success with suggesting one when she was already up and moving. Cassandra returned to the living room and found Stone sitting in the recliner. She put on an impish grin and wandered over to him.

“Get up,” she said. She glared at him and added, “Chair thief.”

“How about we take a walk first?” he suggested.

The smile disappeared. “Right now?” she asked, almost whining.

“You’re up; why not?” Stone asked.

“Because I’m tired,” Cassandra said.

“You’re gonna be tired all day, Cassie,” he reasoned.

She thought about it for a moment and said, “Just a few minutes, right? Then we can come back?”

“Then we can come back,” he promised.

Cassandra put a robe on over her pajamas, slid her feet into slippers, and begrudgingly followed Stone out of the hotel door. Their room was situated just a few doors down from the far end of the hallway, and Cassandra exhaled heavily when Stone turned them towards the lengthier side of the corridor.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The hallway just looks so _long_ ,” Cassandra sighed.

“So we won’t do the whole hallway,” he said. He pointed to the third door on his left. “Think you can make it to that third door right there?”

“Yeah,” she replied. She stood up a little straighter and, with more confidence, repeated, “Yeah, I can do that.”

Stone offered his arm, and she took it, linking her arm with his. She placed her other hand on their joined arms and nodded. They walked slowly, steadily, and silently down to the designated door. She smiled and looked at him when they reached it. Upon seeing his grin, hers quickly faded.

“You’re going to make me go further, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I think you proved yesterday that we really can’t _make_ you do anything,” he teased. “But how about to the elevator there in the middle?”

“Okay,” she nodded.

Every time they reached one of his little goals, he’d give her another one, and pretty soon, they’d reached the end of the hall.

“Make it to that window, and you’re out of hallway,” he pointed out. She beamed with pride until she turned around to see how far she’d walked. Her face instantly fell, and Stone asked, “What now?”

“I have to go all the way _back_ now,” she moaned. She looked at him hopefully and added, “Unless you’ll carry me?”

“Yeah, nice try, darlin’,” he replied.

She sighed, never having expected that to work in the first place. With a shrug, she said, “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

He squeezed her hand in reassurance, and he let her rest for a couple minutes upon reaching the window. She looked around outside for a couple minutes before she nodded. She took his arm again, and they leisurely walked back to the suite, this time, forgoing the stops they made at every few doors on the way there.

After a few minutes, Cassandra rolled her eyes and muttered, “This is ridiculous. A week and a half ago, I was running through Lithuania.”

“A week and a half ago, you couldn’t do really complicated equations without bleeding or passin’ out,” he reminded her.

“I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do that right now, either,” she said. She laughed and added, “I can’t even follow a stupid movie for more than fifteen minutes.”

“You’ll get there,” he said. “When you get back out there, you’re gonna blow the rest of us out of the water.”

She scoffed. “Like I didn’t already do that.”

           

Later that day, Stone called and placed a dinner order for the two of them from one of the restaurants downstairs. Rather than have it delivered, he opted to travel to the ground floor and pick it up himself. He slipped the key card into the door, balancing the bag of food on one arm, and opened the door. A muffled cry met his ears almost as soon as he walked in.

“Stone!” Cassandra called as soon as heard the door click.

Stone quickly put the bag on the counter and headed in the direction of Cassandra’s cry. He walked into the bedroom and found it empty. He peered out into the living room when she called again.

“Jacob!” she hollered, a hint of desperation in her voice.

Alarmed by the use of his first name again, he turned to find her but paused when he realized she was behind the closed bathroom door.

“Cassandra?” he asked.

“It’s okay; come in,” she said.

He opened the bathroom door carefully, but he still didn’t see her. The shower curtain, however, was drawn shut. “Are you behind the curtain?” he asked.

“Yes,” she quietly admitted.

“Did you fall? Are you alright?” he asked with concern.

“I didn’t fall,” Cassandra said.

“I was barely gone fifteen minutes,” he said. “What happened?”

“I wanted to wash my hair with a quick rinse and the baby shampoo, just like Dr. Shepherd’s instructions said, but once I got in here, I realized I can’t see where the incision was, and that made me nervous, and then I was afraid the water from the showerhead would hit my head wrong and hurt, and then I just needed to sit down, and now I’m not quite sure I can get back up,” she explained.

“So you’ve been sittin’ there for…” he started.

“Well, I don’t have a watch in here, but maybe ten minutes or so,” she replied. He couldn’t see her face, but amid the sass, he could hear the humiliation in her voice.

One of the nurses had helped her bathe during her hospital stay, but they had been told not to wash her hair for at least 72 hours after the operation, which she hadn’t hit until the previous afternoon. The nurses had removed the bandages and shown them how to care for the incision site before they left the hospital. With that taken care of, between the transition to life outside of the hospital and the thunderstorm and the miniature battles on their first day in the hotel, washing her hair had been the last thing on anyone’s mind.

He let out a disapproving sigh and asked, perhaps a little too roughly, “Why did you attempt something like that by yourself?”

“Because the walking went so well, I thought I could do it,” Cassandra said.

“You know I’m here to _help_ , right?” he said.

“Not with _this_!” she exclaimed.

“With _anything_ ,” he sharply insisted, cringing as soon as he heard the manner in which his thoughts were coming out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry!” she called. “Are you going to scold me, or are you going to help me?”

“Of course I’m gonna…” he began. He was trying to tell her he was going to help when he really thought about the situation at hand and paused. “Cassandra?”

“What?” she exclaimed, rapidly growing even more frustrated with the situation.

“You’re…are you naked back there?” he asked.

“I’m in the _shower_ , you genius dummy!” she sassily replied.

“Okay, alright, hold on,” Stone grumbled. He slipped out into the bedroom and grabbed one of the towels Flynn had purchased from the dresser, silently thanking god that Flynn had bought towels much larger than the small ones provided by hotels. He returned to the bathroom and slipped the towel through the side of the shower curtain, turning his head away just in case.

“I told you I didn’t even get the water on,” Cassandra replied. “Are you even _listening_?”

“Look, I’m gonna help you, alright, but I’m not gonna help you naked, so put the god damn towel on,” he said, shaking it up and down.

“Oh,” she replied. She grabbed the towel and said, “Okay, give me a minute.”

She told him when, and he pulled back the shower curtain to find her sitting in the bathtub, the fluffy green towel wrapped around her slender frame, and a shot of fear ran through him all over again. Her incision site had remained uncovered since being discharged from the hospital. A triangle from the front left portion of her head had been shaved, and if it wasn’t for the staples in her head or the other telltale signs of surgery, Stone thought, she’d simply look like she was attempting to rock some trendy hairstyle. One of the doctors had tightly braided her hair along where they had shaved to act as a barrier and keep her hair from getting in the surgeons’ way during the procedure, and Cassandra had left the braids intact, worried that undoing them would irritate the wound or painfully pull on the incision.

She was facing the outside of the bathtub, and she sheepishly looked up at him, one hand holding the fastened towel tightly against her breasts. The arm that had contained all of her IVs was a rainbow of colors from the bruising beneath her skin, something she had been concealing with her clothes, and Stone sunk to his knees by the bathtub, trying to think about anything other than how small and fragile she looked.

“Do you think you can turn so your…” he started. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“So the side of my head that’s not half-bald is towards you?” she finished.

“Yeah,” he frowned. She nodded and carefully turned herself ninety degrees. He placed his hand over the faucet and asked if she was ready. She nodded again, and he turned the water on. She squeaked and squirmed as the cool water flooded the bathtub. “Sorry, it’s gonna take a second to warm up,” he said.

“This is so embarrassing,” she groaned. He grabbed one of the cups resting by the sink and held it under the bathtub faucet. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I’m not gonna turn the showerhead on if you think it might hurt,” he said as they simultaneously looked up towards the device in question. “Keep your head back.”

She did, closing her eyes, and he slowly poured the water over her head to wet her hair. A good portion of the liquid spilled over the edge of the tub, soaking one of the knees on his jeans. He groaned and stood up, telling Cassandra he’d be right back. Stone returned just a minute later in a t-shirt and his boxer shorts instead of the jeans and long-sleeved hoodie he’d been wearing a minute ago, and Cassandra’s eyes grew as wide as the diameter of the cup in her hands.

“Now what are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m helpin’,” Stone insisted.

“By taking your clothes off?” she asked in a high-pitched tone.

“Just trust me, okay?” he replied, the edge returning to his voice.

“Why? You don’t trust me,” she shot back.

“Yes, I do! I told you that before you went to the OR,” he argued.

“You _meant_ that?” she asked in surprise.

“Do I say things I don’t mean?” Stone asked.

“ _Yes_ , all the time!” Cassandra said, thinking of his family in Oklahoma, completely in the dark about who he really is.

“To _you_?” Stone challenged.

Cassandra momentarily held his gaze before acquiescing to his argument. “No,” she said. Her voice softened and she asked, “So you meant it? You trust me now?”

“I meant it,” he said, getting back down onto his knees in front of the bathtub.

“I thought you were just saying that for my benefit,” she admitted. “Because of the circumstances.”

“Nah, I mean, I wanted you to feel better, but I know having my trust is important to you, so I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it,” he said as he got to work on her hair again.     

“What changed?” she asked softly.

“You proved yourself,” he shrugged. “You proved me wrong, and I decided not to hold you to one mistake when your personal stakes had been so high.”

“Thank you,” she muttered.

Stone grabbed the baby shampoo and said, “You let me know the second anything starts to hurt, okay?”

“Okay,” she promised.

He carefully and silently lathered up her hair, and she frequently glanced at him as he worked. Cassandra’s shoulders sunk a little as she drew the towel as close to her body as she could. He noticed her obvious discomfort and quickly pulled his hands back, asking if she was alright again.

“This is just really intimate,” she replied.

Without thinking, and letting his own discomfort get the better of him, he muttered, “Yeah, well, trying to do this by yourself was really stupid.” His eyes left her as he turned to fill the cup with water again.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, tears springing to her eyes.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said gruffly.

“Then why are you mad at me?” she exclaimed.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said, his voice softening. “Head back. Close your eyes.”

She tilted her head back and he washed the shampoo away. When he was finished, he turned off the water, sat back, and looked at her. She finally opened her eyes and turned her head to face him, water dripping down her face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“I’m not mad at you for trying to do something normal on your own,” he said. He reached out and brushed back the hair that was dripping down her face. “I just didn’t know how scared I was gonna be with this surgery thing, and even though you’re fine now, seeing ya like this scares me, too, and I’m not handlin’ it as well as I’d like.”

“You were scared?” she asked. “You didn’t show it. I mean, you were a rock during the animation that freaked everyone else out, and…okay, maybe you seemed the most uneasy of the group on the day, but you didn’t really seem scared.”

“You didn’t see the lunatic in the waiting room,” he promised. She grinned. “ _You_ were scared; I couldn’t act like I was, too.” They held the other’s gaze for a moment before he said, “If I help you stand up, do you think you can take it from here?”

Cassandra nodded, and he stood. He helped her stand up and held onto her arm until he was sure she had gained her footing. He shot her a small smile, pulled the curtain almost all the way shut, and headed for the bathroom door.

He hung around the bedroom, wanting to be close by in case she needed more assistance, but when the water in the shower shut off again, Stone returned to the kitchen to warm up the now-room-temperature dinners he’d retrieved from the restaurant downstairs. A few minutes later, Cassandra joined him.

“Hey,” she said softly.

He turned around to find her standing in the bedroom doorway in a new set of Tinkerbell pajamas from Flynn, a towel for her wet hair draped across her shoulders. She looked completely worn out, but once she had his attention, she walked over to him, holding her arms out for a hug. Cassandra wrapped her arms around his torso, and he returned the embrace, holding her tightly in the middle of the small kitchen. After a few moments, she pulled back enough to look at him.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Good,” he replied.

“No, I mean… _I’m_ okay. I know I look kind of scary right now between the hair and the staples and all the bruises, but I’m okay,” she said. He nodded, and she let go, taking a seat at the counter with a grin. “So tell me more about the waiting room; apparently I missed a lot.”

 

They woke up the next morning to a rattling noise above their heads. Cassandra slowly opened her eyes and found Ezekiel standing beside the bed, shaking a plastic cup containing her next dose of pills. He realized she was awake, and he shot her a wicked grin.

“Wakey, wakey,” he teased.

Cassandra smiled and sat up from the mountain of pillows behind her, happy to see him. “Do I actually need to take those, or did you just want to wake me up?” she asked.

He pulled a water bottle and a Portland bakery takeout bag from behind his back, sat down on the edge of the bed, and said, “Drink up.”

She took the pills and, as she was swallowing, reached over to the man lying next to her. She gently smacked Stone’s t-shirt-clad chest a few times to rouse him from his sleep. He woke up on a groan as she started nibbling on the cinnamon pastry.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Ezekiel, his voice heavy with sleep.

“Better question: what are you two doing sleeping together?” Ezekiel asked, earning an eye roll from both of the people between the sheets.

“Did you have to say it like that?” Stone asked. “You know it’s not like that.”

“It’s _stupid_ to sleep on the uncomfortable couch when the comfy bed is more than big enough for two people,” Cassandra passionately replied in a way that told Ezekiel that had definitely been a conversation the night before.

Ezekiel chuckled. There was enough space between them for a third person, and he’d only asked the question to get a rise out of his friends. Stone repeated his original inquiry, and Ezekiel divulged that he had arrived to be Cassandra’s servant for the day.

“Did Baird tell you to come because if you don’t take this seriously…?” Stone started.

“ _Relax_ ; I volunteered,” Ezekiel said. “It’s my turn. Go home. I can handle it.”

“Yeah?” Stone asked. He nodded towards the pastry and said, “That all the breakfast you could muster up for her?”

“Shut up; it’s yummy,” Cassandra said. Stone still looked skeptical and glanced at Cassandra. She sighed and lightheartedly rolled her eyes in response. “We’ll be _fine_ , oh my gosh. You’ve been in Seattle for almost a week, Stone. It’s a nice hotel, but you must want to go home. _I_ want to go home!”

“Alright, fine, but Jones, you’ve got to…” Stone started, pointing an accusing finger at the younger man.

“Yeah, yeah, Baird gave me the rundown,” Ezekiel said. “Go.”

Stone took a few minutes to get ready and gather his things before heading for the Back Door in the janitor’s closet down the hall. After confirming Cassandra didn’t need anything else from him, Ezekiel headed into the living room, plopped down on the couch, and fired up a video game on the flat-screen television. Cassandra wandered into the room about an hour later, still dressed in her Tinkerbell pajamas, and peered into a bag on the coffee table.

“Is this for me?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” Ezekiel said. “Goodies from the Library.”

She eagerly dug through the burlap messenger bag and found a mathematics book she had been working her way through before the surgery, a science textbook from her “to read” pile, and a fairytale book she assumed Ezekiel had thrown in for fun. When she pulled out the next item, she turned towards Ezekiel and held it up. “What is this?” she asked.

He glanced over from the television and grinned as she looked thoroughly unamused by the children’s science-themed coloring and activity book she held in her hands. He chuckled and said, “Stone said you had the attention span of a four-year-old right now, so I brought you a science book for a four-year-old. There are crayons in there, too.”

Despite herself, she giggled, fishing them out of the bag. “Are you going to make fun of me if I actually use these?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ezekiel promised.

Cassandra looked back into the bag and dug what looked to be an ancient book from the bottom. It had a brown leather cover with its titled etched in gold on the spine. The pages inside were yellowed and well-worn but intact. She carefully flipped through it and said, “You brought me a book about magic?”

“No, I didn’t,” Ezekiel said.

She turned around to face him again and said, “Yes, you did. See?”

He paused his game and took the book from her hands, looking it over. “I just pulled stuff from your desk, I swear.”

“Then how did it get in the bag?” she asked. “I’ve never read anything like this before.”

Ezekiel shrugged. “I guess the Library wanted you to have it.”

They spent the morning in the living room; Ezekiel played video games while Cassandra, acting upon the natural pull she felt towards the magic book that had appeared in the bag, attempted to read. When she realized she had spent an hour reading the same four paragraphs over and over because she hadn’t retained any of the information, she gave up and played with the science coloring book Ezekiel had brought her. As promised, he teased her as she colored pictures of the planets, and she offered to play video games with him instead, a suggestion he quickly rebuffed. As afternoon crept upon them, Cassandra put down her crayons.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’m getting hungry.”

Ezekiel paused the game again and said, “Okay, what do you want?”

She shrugged. “I figured you’d just pull out your phone and order pizza.”

“I’m under pretty explicit orders _not_ to just pull out my phone and order pizza,” Ezekiel revealed.

She laughed, imagining the conversation Baird must have had with him before sending him through the Back Door that morning. “Since when are you one to follow orders?” she challenged.

“You actually want pizza?” he asked.

“ _Yes_ ,” she sighed. “And cheesy bread.”

He pulled his phone off the coffee table and said, “Coming right up.”

When the pizza and cheesy bread arrived forty minutes later, Cassandra clapped like a child getting away with something while Mom and Dad weren’t looking. Ezekiel set the food down onto the coffee table and opened the boxes, not even bothering with a proper table or even plates. Cassandra slid onto the floor to eat, and Ezekiel joined her. He flipped on a mindless television show, and Cassandra asked how things were going back home.

“It’s quiet,” Ezekiel admitted. “Flynn and I were working on something that first day, but once Baird came back, he disappeared with her. The clippings book’s been calm, so I don’t really want to know what they’ve been off doing.” Cassandra chuckled, and Ezekiel continued, “Jenkins is his normal, grumpy self. I made too much of a mess; I don’t respect the Library…you know, the usual.” At this, Cassandra sighed. “You miss it, don’t you?” Ezekiel asked.

“It’s home,” Cassandra shrugged.

 

Cassandra appeared in the doorway that separated the bedroom and the living room a couple hours after disappearing for her after-lunch nap. Ezekiel lay sprawled out on the couch reading an old book from the Library. She smiled and leaned against the doorway, watching and waiting for him to notice she was there. When he didn’t, curiosity got the better of her, and she crept silently towards the couch, wanting to get a better look at what he was reading. As she peered over his shoulder, he finally sensed her presence and abruptly put the book down.

“Jeez, make a noise!” he exclaimed.

“Sorry,” Cassandra giggled.

“You’re up,” Ezekiel said. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” she assured him. “Can we walk?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. He realized how it huge it was for her to be _asking_ to walk and repeated, with more enthusiasm. “Yeah!”

“Outside?” she asked.

“Even better,” he said.

She swapped her pajamas for knee-length leggings, a skirt, and a zip-up sweater and took a deep breath once she got outside. Ezekiel offered his arm, and she linked hers with his. The hotel had a pool, a hot tub, a playground, and a picnic area, and they leisurely strolled around the sidewalks. He tucked his hands into the pockets on his jacket and spent more time watching her than watching where they were going.

“You’re feeling better,” he finally said.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“You _asked_ to come outside and walk,” Ezekiel said.

“I was getting a little stir-crazy,” she admitted.

“You’re nowhere near the _hellion_ that Baird made you out to be,” Ezekiel continued.

“Oh my god,” Cassandra gasped. “I still need to apologize to her.”

“And you’re wearing a skirt,” he said.

“I always wear skirts,” she laughed.

“Exactly,” he said. “You look more like _you_ than you have all week.”

“I don’t know if I feel that way, though,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I can describe it,” she said. “I just…don’t feel normal.”

“You will eventually,” he said.

“I hope so,” she said. “Speaking of not normal…I caught you reading a book from the Library. I didn’t know you did that.”

“I _read_ ,” Ezekiel said.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “You read comic books and bank blueprints and video game cheat codes. You don’t _research_ for the fun of it like Stone and I do, and that wasn’t a recreational book.”

“That was for fun,” Ezekiel argued.

“Ancient Egypt is fun for you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Oh yeah,” he said. His tone was unconvincing, but he nodded in affirmation. “Loads. It’s fascinating.”

She shot him a look that told him she didn’t believe that for a second, but rather than push the issue, she shrugged it off and kept walking. A few paces later, as they came upon some tables and chairs near the pool, she reached for a chair, suddenly too tired to keep going. A look of worry crossed his face, and he pulled out the nearest chair.

“Hey, here, you’re okay,” he said quickly, helping her sit down.

“Sorry,” she sighed. She put her elbows on the table and leaned her head into her hands. “I think I need to sit for a little bit.”

“That’s okay,” he assured her. “You’re alright, though, right?”

She promised him that she was and sat back up, leaning against the back of the chair. It was too cold to go swimming, but people meandered about outside. A family passed Ezekiel and Cassandra, heading back into the hotel from the playground, and the child slowed down as they passed, his eyes fixated on Cassandra’s head. His mother tugged his hand to no avail, realized what had caught his attention, and started apologizing profusely. Cassandra guaranteed the woman it was okay, and, before she could offer to explain what had happened to her to the child, the woman had scooped up the child and walked away. Cassandra looked at Ezekiel.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be out without a hat or something,” she muttered.

“Why?” Ezekiel asked.

“Well…because of that,” she said, pointing in the direction of the mother and son. “My head does look kind of creepy. I practically look like Frankenstein.”

“You look kind of _badass_ ,” Ezekiel said. Cassandra rolled her eyes, believing this to be another statement said for her benefit. “No, seriously. It says you survived something awful. Let everyone know how awesome you are.”

Cassandra genuinely smiled and leaned her head into her hands again as another wave of dizziness crossed through her skull. Ezekiel winced and watched her with concern.

“I’m okay,” she promised.

“You don’t look okay,” he said quietly.

“But I am; I promise,” she said.

Ezekiel started getting antsy after just a few minutes of sitting outside. When they made it back to the room, Cassandra headed for the bed, claiming she needed to lie down. He nodded, and she asked what he was going to do.

“I don’t know,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll find something, I guess.”

“I’m sorry; I know being here probably isn’t very fun,” she said. She shot him a playfully accusatory look and said, “Bet you’re really sorry for what you did now, huh?”

Ezekiel looked at her and thought about the tumor-free scan Dr. Shepherd had shown them just a few days prior. “Nope,” he said boastfully. “Not at all. Are you?”

“No,” she said sincerely. “Not at all.”

 

The next morning, Baird and Stone sat at the center table in the Annex, almost gleefully speculating about how dazed and worn out Ezekiel would be when he walked through the Back Door. Jenkins finished setting it up, and Ezekiel strutted into the Annex, a smug, victorious look on his face.

“Hey, Jones,” Baird smiled. “How’d it go?”

“Yeah, how was it?” Stone asked.

“You can wipe those self-righteous looks off your faces,” Ezekiel said. “That was easy! I don’t know what you two were going on about.”

“Easy?” Baird asked, her face falling. “She was…”

“Cassandra,” Ezekiel interrupted. “Tired, sometimes dizzy Cassandra, but pretty much just Cassandra. Maybe she just likes me the best, since I was the one who got the brain grape out of her head and all.”

“I don’t remember you being in the OR with a scalpel,” Stone grumbled.

“So there were no problems or hiccups at all?” Baird asked.

“No…and you two thought I couldn’t handle it,” Ezekiel chuckled, heading for the exit of the Annex. “I mean, come on, I’m _awesome_.”

After he’d gone, Baird and Stone shared a look of resentment and discontent.

“Okay, that’s not fair,” Stone said bitterly.

“That’s becoming an alarming theme around here,” Baird said, glaring at the hallway Jones had disappeared down.

“Him escaping whatever ordeal we’re goin’ through?” Stone asked.

“Mm-hmm,” Baird replied, humming her confirmation.

 

They had two more full days in the hotel, with the post-op appointment with Dr. Shepherd on the morning of the third day. Baird had promised to go to the appointment with Cassandra, so she decided to take the last day in the hotel, leaving Stone to head through the Back Door before Jenkins could close it. He found Cassandra on the suite’s balcony, dressed in a simple cotton floral dress and bright colored tights, sitting in a chair with her feet propped up on the small table. She smiled when she saw him and admitted she was going crazy stuck in that room. Her cabin fever led to lunch at the café next to the hotel and another walk around the pool that evening. The following afternoon with Baird was similar, though the day started with an apology and ended with Cassandra falling asleep after failing to follow a movie she had already seen three times before.

The next morning, Baird walked around the hotel room, making sure they had gathered everything before heading downstairs to check out. In the living room, Baird picked up the magic book from the table beside the couch. She nervously thumbed through it, glancing up every few seconds to make sure Cassandra hadn’t joined her. She knew as well as Flynn did that of their three charges, Cassandra was the most enthralled with magic and the most likely to want to delve into it now that nothing was holding her back, but she expected it to take more than a few days after the surgery for that exploration to begin.

“Well, that was fast,” Baird muttered. She then called, “Cassandra, can you come here for a second?”

Cassandra appeared in the living room shortly after Baird called. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh, nothing,” Baird said. She held up the book. “What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s so cool,” Cassandra said. “Ezekiel brought me a bunch of books from the Library, but when we were looking through them, he said he’d never seen that one before, that the Library must have wanted me to have it.”

“Have you read it?” Baird asked.

Cassandra laughed. “Please, you saw me with the movie last night. Reading’s completely impossible right now.”

She took the book from Baird’s hands and went into the bedroom to put it with her other things. Baird nodded and returned to cleaning up the living room.

“ _The Library_ gave it to her. Great,” Baird muttered. She paused for a moment, shook her head, and said, “And now I’m talking to myself again.”

           

After taking a taxi back from the hotel, Cassandra sat on the end of the exam table in the consultation room, nervously wringing her hands against her chest. Baird noticed and walked over to her, vacating the chair against the wall.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Baird asked.

“My head still hurts, so I’m a little scared this is going to hurt,” Cassandra admitted, pointing to the staples that were due to be removed.

Before Baird could answer, Amelia knocked on the door and entered the room with Cassandra’s information pulled up on her iPad and a cheery hello.

“How’s it going?” Amelia asked, slipping on latex gloves. “Everything go alright these past few days?”

“Oh, it had its ups and downs,” Cassandra replied, glancing at Baird. “Like that first car ride to the hotel.”

Amelia nodded and said, “I’ve had patients tell me that first ride home is the Car Ride from Hell, so you’re definitely not alone in hating that.”

“And _thunder_ , huh?” Baird asked, looking at Amelia.

Amelia cringed. “Oh yeah, I thought of you as soon as that started,” she said. “That was really bad?”

“She called me a hellion,” Cassandra said, pointing at Baird.

“What? I didn’t…how do you…?” Baird stuttered. She realized how Cassandra would’ve found out that word had slipped from her lips and groaned, “Damn it, Jones!”

Amelia told Cassandra to lie back on the reclined exam table, and Cassandra did so with a deep breath, nerves creeping across her stomach. Amelia made her way to the head of the table so she could examine Cassandra’s incision site.

“Everything went alright otherwise?” Amelia asked. Cassandra nodded. “I bet you’re eager to get home.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Cassandra sighed. Amelia smiled in understanding.

“Well, the incision site looks good, so let’s get those staples out, and you should be good to go, okay?” Amelia said.

“Is this going to hurt?” Cassandra asked.

“No,” Amelia replied. “You might feel a little pressure, but it shouldn’t hurt.”

“You want my hand anyway?” Baird asked, holding it out as an offering. Cassandra nodded and curled one hand around Baird’s.

Amelia cleaned the staples and the skin around Cassandra’s incision and then used a special tool to remove the staples. Cassandra squeezed Baird’s hand as the first few were removed, but she relaxed a bit when she realized it really wasn’t going to hurt.

“So, I don’t think we ever actually talked about this, but what is it that you do for work?” Amelia asked as she worked.

“I’m a librarian,” Cassandra said.

“Oh, great,” Amelia said with a laugh. “No driving until you’re off the post-op meds, but if you can carpool with one of your friends, you can probably go back to work in just another two weeks or so.”     

“Really?” Cassandra asked with excitement.

“Yeah, sure,” Amelia said. She thought about it for a minute and said, “Wait a minute, all five of you work together, right? You’re all librarians? Even you, Colonel? That’s a bit of a career change.”

“I’m more…security,” Baird said. Cassandra grinned at Baird’s growing discomfort with the conversation.

“Right,” Amelia nodded, a little confused as to why a library in Portland would _need_ security. She gestured to Cassandra and said, “Yeah, you and Flynn…I could see that, but the kid? The cowboy? They’re librarians, too?”

“It’s probably not exactly what you’re picturing,” Cassandra said with a laugh.

“They’re a different kind of librarian,” Baird added.

“Oh, what do you mean?” Amelia asked with interest.

“Well…” Baird started, her ability to explain their jobs on the fly failing her yet again.

“There’s some…field work,” Cassandra said, jumping in when Baird failed to elaborate. “Field research. It can be a little…unpredictable.”

“Alright, well…just take it easy,” Amelia said.

“Is it okay to go to the Library?” Cassandra asked.

Amelia chuckled. “You’re not under house arrest, Cassandra,” she said. “If you want to go curl up in a chair and read a book…”

“ _Attempt_ to read a book, you mean,” Cassandra muttered with a roll of her eyes.

Amelia chuckled again as the familiar complaint rolled off of Cassandra’s lips. “By all means, go ahead,” she said. “But I would say no field work until you can drive again.”

“At least,” Baird agreed.

Cassandra sighed. It had only been a week, and she didn’t feel anywhere near up to it, but she already missed being a Librarian. A few more months sounded like a lifetime. She was going to have to find something to do with all that time. Amelia finished removing the staples, cleaned the incision site again, and placed a bandage over the area. Upon hearing Cassandra had been too apprehensive about undoing the braids around the surgical area, Amelia carefully removed them while running through a list of hair products to avoid for the next month or two. As the appointment drew to a close, Amelia pulled out the iPad and scheduled Cassandra for another post-operative visit to take place in about three and a half months.

“So, you are good to go home.” Amelia started, heading for the door. “Feel free to call me if anything comes up or if you have any more questions, and otherwise, I’ll see you in…”

“Wait,” Cassandra said. She pushed herself off the exam table as quickly as she could while still being cautious and met Amelia by the door for a hug. Amelia, slightly taken aback, took a second to return the hug, but she did, a grin crossing her face. Cassandra pulled back after just a moment, tears springing to her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said. “I…I don’t have any mirrors in my apartment because I couldn’t look in one without thinking about how that thing in my head was going to kill me.”

“Well, then, go buy one!” Amelia told her. Cassandra laughed and tearfully nodded, rubbing her eyes before the tear drops could actually slip down her cheeks. “I’ll see you in a few months.”

Amelia closed the door behind her, and Cassandra walked over to Baird to gather her things. Baird pulled out her phone.

“Should I call Jenkins?” Baird asked.

Cassandra’s face fell. “I, um…I’ve felt much better these last few days, but I still don’t think I’m ready for the door,” she admitted.

“Okay,” Baird said instantly. “I guess we need to find a rental car office.”

“Actually,” Cassandra said. She took the phone from Baird’s hands and dialed Flynn’s number. After a few rings, she said, “Oh, it’s not Eve; it’s Cassandra…Yeah, she’s fine. She’s right here. I just had a quick question for you, and Colonel Baird’s phone was closer. Is the Library’s Cassandra Brain Surgery tab still open by any chance?”

A few hours later, they boarded a plane from Seattle to Portland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done with Amelia for a chapter or two, but she'll be back later! Thanks everyone for the likes/comments so far. I really appreciate it!


	5. The Happenings at Home

Baird and Cassandra arrived at Cassandra’s apartment after the short flight to Portland and a short taxi ride to her building. They walked into the small apartment and found a large vase of flowers sitting on her kitchen table. Cassandra gasped, dropped her bag on the floor, and wandered over to them. She fished the card out from among the flowers and grinned.

“Who are they from?” Baird asked.

“Stone,” Cassandra said. She waved the card a bit. “It says _welcome home_. That’s so sweet…but how did he get in here to leave them on the table?”

Baird shot Cassandra a look that said she should know the answer to that. “I’ll give you three guesses,” Baird said.

“Ezekiel,” Cassandra said with a slight roll of her eyes.

“Might want to get the locks changed…and doubled…when this is all over,” Baird suggested.

Cassandra spent that first day back in Portland luxuriating in being home and sleeping off the fatigue from the plane trip. Baird stayed with her again that first day, and Stone took Baird’s place the next morning. Cassandra woke up in the late morning and found Stone reading an art history book on her couch, his sock-covered feet propped up on the coffee table. He had been to her apartment before, but she still found it a little startling how natural he looked curled up in her living room, just a handful of feet away from the table that held the flowers he’d bought her.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Hey,” he replied. He set the book down and followed her. “How are you feelin’?”

“Good,” Cassandra answered. “I’m actually not sure I really need someone with me all the time anymore.”

“Well, until you’re sure, someone will be here,” Stone promised her.

“You’ve been with me the most this past week; you must be bored or restless or…something,” she said.

“I don’t mind spending the day with you, Cassie,” he said.

The smile he received in return was nothing short of dazzling. “Likewise,” she said.

They spent the morning in silence, sharing space on the couch. Stone read his art history book while Cassandra flipped through the magazines that had piled up in her mailbox. When she saw what looked like a gift peeking out of Stone’s bag, he said that he had almost forgotten, and that was from Colonel Baird. Cassandra grabbed the box and slid onto the floor with her back against the couch. She pulled a large hand mirror out of the box; the mirror had a post-it note on the back that held a promise to go get a bigger one for her wall when she was feeling up to shopping and redecorating. Cassandra flipped the mirror around to look at herself, and Stone watched with interest.

“What’s the deal with the mirror?” he finally asked.

“I don’t see Death anymore,” Cassandra replied with a smile. She turned her head so the side with the shaved portion was most visible, and her smile deflated. With a groan, she said, “Though I’m not sure this looks much better.”

“You’re fine,” Stone assured her.

“I mean, it’s better without the metal staples in my head, but maybe, when I’m allowed…maybe I should dye my hair blonde,” Cassandra said, thinking out loud. “Then maybe the missing part won’t be as noticeable.”

“Don’t you dare,” Stone grumbled, the words slipping from his lips before his brain could stop them. Cassandra looked up at him, surprised by his brusque opinion. “I mean, it’s your choice, but the red suits you. I like it.”

“I do, too,” she sighed. She looked at herself for a few more minutes and whined, “I just look so weird! And not in an ‘oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-I-really-had-brain-surgery’ kind of way, in an ‘oh-my-god-I- _really_ -can’t-pull-this-look-off’ kind of way. Though I kind of can’t believe I really had brain surgery. Maybe I should just shave it all off.”

“You could; you probably have a cute head,” Stone said simply. Growing up with sisters, he was no stranger to girls feeling insecure about their appearance. As any brother would, he’d grown accustomed to purposely making it worse by either cracking jokes or simply agreeing with the remarks. His lighthearted comment led to a long, guttural groan from Cassandra, and he chuckled, taking the mirror out of her hands. She looked at him as he set the mirror face down on the table and sincerely said, “Hey, you’re beautiful, okay? Don’t worry about that.”

She prettily blushed at the compliment and looked away from him, awkwardly pulling a magazine back towards her.

Later, when the day was winding down, and the movie they’d been watching was reaching the end of its credits, Cassandra slowly stood from the couch and stretched. Stone kept an eye on her; she was moving and walking on her own now, sometimes with the assistance of walls and furniture, but she was still slow. She glanced down at him.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Are you staying the night?”

“That was the plan,” he confirmed.

“Okay, well, you can turn a light on if you need to to find the bed later; it probably won’t wake me up,” she said, heading for her bedroom.

“Oh, that’s okay; I’ll just stay out here,” Stone said.

She looked confused. “Why would you do that? We slept in the same bed at the hotel.”

“Yeah, but that was a hotel. This is _your_ …” Stone started, using his fingers to point down the hallway towards Cassandra’s bedroom.

Cassandra groaned and rolled her eyes. “Are we seriously going to have this conversation again? It’s _stupid_ to sleep on the couch when you don’t have to,” she insisted, waving her hands in the air as if that helped her make her point.

“Are you sure it’s not…” he started. She cut him off again.

“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” she said.

“I was going to say are you sure it’s not too much of an invasion of your privacy.”

“Oh,” she said. She thought about it for a moment and said, “No, I don’t think so, but fine; stay out here; be uncomfortable; whatever.”

She threw her hands into the air and, with a huff, turned around and headed down the hallway to bed; he joined her a few hours later.

 

The next day, at the Annex, Baird was sitting at her perfectly organized desk, jotting down notes from the case she and Flynn had worked the day before when Ezekiel came strolling into the Annex, shoving a book into a satchel draped across his chest. Baird put her pen down and threw her hands up in disbelief as Ezekiel appeared.

“Colonel Baird,” Ezekiel said slowly, a flash of guilt in his tone. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Uh, likewise,” Baird replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Cassandra right now?”

“About that,” Ezekiel said. “Can we switch? I’ve got something I need to do.”

Baird sighed and began standing from her desk as she spoke. She knew this was going to happen eventually. “Jones, listen, I know you say you bail as soon as things aren’t fun anymore, and I know keeping a watchful eye on Cassandra probably isn’t very fun for you, but you’re part of a team here; we’re a team, and part of being a member of a team is stepping up and helping each other out when the situation calls for it, and…”

She was cut off by Ezekiel’s eager rebuttal. “Great,” he said. “Then you understand! See you later, Colonel!”

“I meant that _you_ need to help _Cassandra_ , not that _I_ need to help…” Baird argued, trailing off as Ezekiel disappeared through the back door. She wandered over to the globe to see where he’d set the coordinates. She spoke to herself when she said, “What the hell is he doing in Egypt?” With a shake of her head, she decided she didn’t really want to know and gathered her things to head to Cassandra’s. 

She let herself in to Cassandra’s apartment with the key Cassandra had given her. Baird knocked on the door and called her name as she entered so as not to scare her. Cassandra appeared from the hallway towards her bedroom dressed in pajamas.

“What are you doing here?” Cassandra asked.

“Ezekiel…” Baird started. She sighed and said, “I didn’t ask. Stone says you’re upset about your hair.”

“Oh, I…” she stuttered. “It’s not really a big deal here at home, but if I want to go out soon…I just look weird. It’s a superficial girl thing.”

Baird walked over to Cassandra’s table and pulled out a chair. “Sit,” she said. Cassandra took a seat, and Baird disappeared into the bathroom to get a hair brush. When she returned, she said, “Tell me if anything I do hurts, okay?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Cassandra promised. “I hit the incision site when I was brushing my hair this morning. I’ve never seen Stone move so quickly.” Baird grinned and started brushing Cassandra’s hair. Cassandra glanced up at her. “What are you doing?”

“We’re just going to try to make it a little less noticeable,” Baird said. After a few moments of silence, she asked, “So, um…have you told your parents about the surgery?”

Cassandra noticeably stiffened. “No,” she said.

“Don’t you think they should know?” Baird asked.

“Why?” Cassandra asked with a scoff, her defenses already going up.

“Oh, I don’t know, because you’re their daughter,” Baird said. “And they should probably know that you don’t have a brain tumor anymore.”

“If they couldn’t handle the diagnosis, I don’t see why they should get to enjoy the celebration,” Cassandra said simply. Eager to change the subject, she asked, “Seriously, what are you doing?”

Baird gave her the hand mirror she had pulled from the bathroom. “It’s not perfect, but it’s something,” she said.

Baird had shifted the part in Cassandra’s hair, pulling some of the hair from the untouched side of her head over to cover the side where the surgery had taken place. Cassandra smiled and turned her head from side to side, examining herself in the mirror.

“I like the boys,” Cassandra said. “But when I mentioned my hair to Stone, he told me I’d probably have a cute head if I were completely bald.”

Baird humorously rolled her eyes and sat down in the chair next to Cassandra. “That’s such a boy thing to say,” she agreed.

Cassandra laughed and added, “So sometimes it’s nice to have another girl around, even a super tough one like you, Colonel.”

Baird smiled at the compliment and genuinely said, “Cassandra, I think you’re braver than I’ll ever be.”

The sentiment hung in the air between the two women until a knock at the door interrupted their moment. Baird shot Cassandra a quizzical look, and Cassandra shrugged, indicating that she had no idea who that might be. Baird made her way to the door and glanced through the peephole. With a grin, she opened the door.

“Hello, Librarian,” Baird said, greeting Flynn, who stood in Cassandra’s doorway with a bag full of groceries in his hand.

“Hello, Guardian,” Flynn replied. He glanced inside the apartment briefly before asking, “Is the kid around?”

“ _The kid_ is right here,” Cassandra said, holding up a finger and waving from her place at the table.

“Oh,” Flynn said. “Cover your eyes.”

Cassandra played along, peeking through her fingers as Flynn and Baird shared a kiss in her doorway. Flynn stepped inside, and Baird shut the door behind him.

“What are you doing here?” Cassandra asked, standing. He set the bags down on her table and enveloped her in a hug.

“I’m here to make you dinner,” Flynn said.

“Really?” Cassandra asked with excitement.

“Stone doesn’t strike me as much of a cook, and I’ve seen the Guardian’s fridge, so I think you’re long overdue for a decent meal, wouldn’t you say?” Flynn asked. Cassandra nodded her approval. Flynn gestured to the vase of flowers on the kitchen table and said, “Those flowers are lovely.”

The pretty blush returned to Cassandra’s face as she smiled. “They are, aren’t they?”

Cassandra sat back down at the table, gently fingering one of the flowers, and Flynn turned to Baird with a curious expression, silently asking who the flowers were from. Baird mouthed Stone’s name, and Flynn’s eyes widened slightly as he silently gestured to ask if something was going on between Stone and Cassandra. Baird shrugged and then made a face to indicate that she, too, had considered that possibility. Flynn pondered the idea for a moment before nodding his endorsement, and Baird stifled a chuckle, carrying the groceries to the kitchen. Flynn followed her into the kitchen and began unpacking the bags.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt your girls’ night,” Flynn said.

“Oh, no, we were just talking about why Cassandra should tell her parents about the surgery,” Baird said. It was a sneaky move, but she felt the situation called for backup. Cassandra, fully aware of what Baird was doing, groaned and buried her head into her hands on the table top.

“They don’t know?” Flynn asked in surprise.

“No,” Cassandra said.

“Ignoring the part of me that is selfishly glad I wasn’t the only one kept in the dark,” Flynn started, shooting Baird an accusatory look, “Don’t you think they should be apprised of the fact that the status quo is no longer…quo?”

“Not yet,” Cassandra said simply.

“Now that you mention it, I had pondered why they weren’t here…” Flynn said, more to himself than to the room.

“That’s what we’re trying to avoid,” Cassandra said with a laugh. “Though I doubt they’d care enough to come anyway.”

“When’s the last time you saw them?” Baird asked.

“It’s been years,” Cassandra admitted. “They call on my birthday, mostly, I think, to find out if I’m still having them, and I call on special occasions, mostly out of obligation. Why is this such a big deal?”

“I mean, I don’t have kids, but I think if I did, and I was told that I was likely to outlive her, I’d like to be informed if that changed,” Baird said.

“Yes, I agree,” Flynn said.

“If you guys had kids, you’d do everything you could to _make sure_ that changed,” Cassandra muttered. “It’d be a completely different situation.”

“Nobody gets anywhere focusing on the past,” Flynn said. “Maybe they deserve another chance?”

“Yeah, Cassandra, they’re your family,” Baird added.

“No, they’re not! _You are_ ,” Cassandra cried. She’d finally had enough. She took a deep breath and tried to explain. “Maybe they are by blood, but that’s it. You guys are…when we found out about the brain grape, they…” She sighed, words failing her.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Baird offered softly, suddenly feeling a little guilty for pushing the topic.

“No, it’s not that,” Cassandra said. “I just don’t really know where to start. My parents are the kind of stereotypical uppity, high society people who spend all their time worrying about what others will think of them and probably only had a child because it was _expected_ , and I, you know, was supposed to be everything. I was supposed to be extraordinary, but I derailed all of that because I had a brain tumor.”

“Well, that wasn’t your fault,” Flynn said.

“And they know that,” Cassandra said. “But when we found out, I was a child who’d been handed a death sentence. I needed my parents, but all they saw when they looked at me was ruined potential and dashed dreams, mostly theirs, so they…they stopped looking at me,” Cassandra said.

“What do you mean they stopped looking at you?” Baird asked, taking a seat next to Cassandra again.

“My mother cried over the debutante ball she’d have to back out of because why present me to society if I wasn’t really going to be a part of it? She _agonized_ over what to tell her friends, and my father went out and bought a boat with my college money because he’d always wanted one, and well, I wouldn’t be needing that money anymore, even though the doctor explicitly told him the five-year survival rate for someone diagnosed at my age was somewhere around 87 percent, so I probably wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Cassandra explained. Baird and Flynn remained quiet, their hearts filling with sympathy and sadness as she spoke. “I know everyone handles grief differently, but they just weren’t there for me. They didn’t _do_ anything, so the diagnosis was more than just a death sentence. It was when I realized my parents loved the _idea_ of me more than they actually loved _me_.”

“Cassandra,” Flynn said softly, moving over to the table. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“That was a long time ago,” Baird offered.

“No, you don’t understand,” Cassandra said. “They didn’t do _anything_. They just moved on with their lives, almost as if I were already gone, and I’m just so mad, now more than ever, that they’re my _parents_ , and that’s how they reacted, while a bunch a people I met less than a year ago did a whole lot of stupid things to make a solution happen, so every time I think about telling them, I think about everything you and Stone and Ezekiel, and, god, even the _Library_ have done to help me, and I just get _so mad_ at them, and until I’m not mad about that anymore, I’m not going to be able to tell them.”

“Cassandra, I’m sorry I pushed it,” Baird said.

“No, you’re right. They should know,” Cassandra said. “I _know_ that I should be the bigger person and tell them that their daughter is not going to die anymore, but I _can’t_. I can help save the world, and I can stare Death in the face, but I just can’t do that.”

Cassandra let out a defeated sigh and slumped in her chair. Baird and Flynn shared a concerned look over Cassandra’s head, and Flynn walked around her chair. He pulled up a chair of his own and sat down in front of her. Cassandra avoided his gaze.

“Look at me,” Flynn whispered. Cassandra did, embarrassed by how much of her personal baggage she had just let slip. “You are extraordinary. You don’t know it yet because you got dealt a difficult hand before you were old enough to know who you are, but I see it. Eve sees it, and the Library sees it. The Library wouldn’t have chosen you twice if you weren’t extraordinary.”

“Well, there is Jones…” Baird countered.

“ _Shush_ ,” Flynn commanded, shutting his eyes. “We’re having a moment here.”

“Okay, sorry,” Baird said, causing Cassandra to chuckle.

“Now,” Flynn said, turning back to Cassandra. With a teasing tone, he said, “There’s a chocolate cake in that bag over there. I was going to make you wait until you’d eaten your vegetables, but what do you say we start with that…just this once?” He winked at her, and she nodded.

 

A few days later, Stone arrived at Cassandra’s apartment to relieve Ezekiel, who had spent the day with her. He knocked on the door gently; he had her key, but the gentleman in him didn’t like to barge in without notice. After a few moments, he knocked again, increasing his force against the door. Within seconds, his phone buzzed.

‘ _Use the key, doofus. That’s why I gave it to you,_ ’ read the text from Cassandra. Stone chuckled and entered the apartment. He found her in her bedroom, the room dark save for the small lamp by her bed. She was curled up on the mattress in onesie pajamas with a cat face and soft, pointy ears on the hood that was pulled up around her head. He couldn’t help himself and chuckled when he saw her.

“What?” she mumbled, pausing the television show she was watching.

“You look ridiculous, darlin’,” he laughed.

“It has a tail, too,” she said in a weakened voice, pulling the tail up so he could see. That only made Stone laugh harder.

“That can’t be comfortable,” he said.

“Oh, how wrong you are…” Cassandra sighed, sinking deeper into her pillow.

“Did I wake you up?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Just didn’t feel like getting up. I’m not feeling very good today.”

Stone looked around. “Where’s Ezekiel?”

“Oh, he’s gone,” Cassandra said with a wave of her hand. “He’s been gone for hours.”

“What do you mean?” Stone asked, his blood beginning to boil. “Did he know you weren’t feelin’ good?”

“Yeah, but he left when Colonel Baird called,” Cassandra said. “It’s okay.”

“Baird didn’t call him,” Stone said.

“What? No, he said Colonel Baird called and said you guys needed help, and you’d meet him at the Back Door,” Cassandra explained.

“I was with Baird all day, Cass,” Stone said. “Nobody called him.”

“Oh,” Cassandra said, her face falling when she realized Ezekiel had lied to get away.

“I’m gonna kill ‘em,” Stone said upon seeing the hurt look on Cassandra’s face.

“Okay, but can you maybe kill him later?” she asked.

Her eyes were pleading with him not to leave her alone again just yet, so he set his car keys down on her dresser and agreed, “Yeah.”

Planning to spend the night, he swapped his jeans for sweatpants and returned to her bedroom, stretching out on the mattress next to Cassandra. His protective nature, however, got the better of him, and as soon as he was sure she would be asleep for a few hours, he slipped back out of bed and headed back to the Annex.

As he walked down the hallway, he could hear Ezekiel talking in the main room. Stone rounded the corner, and, without even bothering to see who else was around, he curled his fingers into Ezekiel’s shirt, dragged the younger man off his stool, and slammed him into the nearest wall. The nearest wall happened to be a book shelf, which rattled upon impact, a few books falling to the floor.

“ _What the hell_ , Stone?” Baird exclaimed.

“Jones here told Cassandra that he had to leave because you called for help on a case today, and I’m pretty damn positive you did nothin’ of the sort, so I want to know why the hell Jones lied to Cassandra and left her alone all day when she’s not feelin’ very well,” Stone seethed, his eyes never leaving Ezekiel.

“And what do you think you’re doing right now, mate?” Ezekiel asked. “Or is Cassandra here, too?”

“She’s _asleep_ , moron. Now start talkin’,” Stone replied.

“Hold on,” Baird commanded. She took a breath, her brain still processing what was happening. “Stone, is Cassandra alright?”

“Yeah, it’s just an off day. She’s fine,” Stone said. He finally glanced back and found Flynn and Jenkins in the room as well. He felt Ezekiel slipping and pressed him back into the hard surface behind his back. “No thanks to him.”

“Okay, good. Put Jones down,” Baird ordered. When Stone made no motion towards following Baird’s orders, she repeated, her voice a little more stern, “ _Now_ , Stone.”

With a grunt, Stone released Ezekiel and took a step back. Ezekiel let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and straightened his shirt.

“Tell them,” Flynn said, causing both Stone and Baird’s heads to immediately snap towards him, Stone’s in anger, Baird’s in surprise.

“I’ve been looking for something,” Ezekiel revealed. “Flynn’s been helping me here and there; don’t get mad at him.”

“You’re searching for an artifact, Mr. Jones?” Jenkins asked.

“The Eye of Horus,” Ezekiel said. Jenkins immediately nodded in understanding.

“What?” Baird asked off Jenkins’s reaction. “What is it?”

“The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol made up of seven different hieroglyphs,” Flynn said. “Sailors would paint it on the side of their vessels before a long journey; pendants would be crafted for pharaohs and royalty. The symbol’s quite common…even today. The artifact Ezekiel is looking for is the original amulet.”

“And lookin’ for a necklace is more important than taking care of Cassandra?” Stone asked accusingly.

“It’s _for_ Cassandra, you idiot,” Ezekiel replied.

“I’m sorry,” Baird said. “I’m still missing something. Who is Horus, and what is so special about his eye?”

“He’s a deity in ancient Egyptian religion,” Stone said. “The Eye is just his symbol.”

“A symbol of protection and good health,” Ezekiel explained. “And the original amulet, which is what I’m after, is believed to be filled with magical properties that can bestow those gifts onto the wearer of the necklace.”

“Wait, there’s something out there that would give Cassandra _protected_ good health?” Baird asked. “Why didn’t we look for this _before_ we had a surgeon cut into her skull?”

“Because it wouldn’t have worked then,” Flynn said.

“The Eye of Horus is, first and foremost, a protection amulet,” Jenkins explained. “Good health will not simply materialize by placing it around someone’s neck. It can’t remove symptoms manifesting from an existing disease, but it can stop an affliction from originating by prolonging the good health of the wearer.”

“So what you’re saying is she has to already be in good health for the amulet’s magic to have any sort of effect on her?” Stone asked.

“Precisely, Mr. Stone,” Jenkins confirmed. “Miss Cillian would have needed to be cured first, no matter when or _if_ you find this amulet.”

“Which is why Ezekiel feels such a sense of urgency towards finding the amulet,” Flynn explained. “We don’t know what our window of opportunity might be. Oligodendrogliomas have a cruel tendency to come back.”

“And I didn’t know that,” Ezekiel said. “We were sitting in that hospital room, and it suddenly felt like we were talking to Dr. Shepherd about her _next_ brain surgery before we’d even taken her home from this one, and, I mean, she’s doing _great_ , but...the thought of her having to do this _again_ …”

“Yeah, I can’t stand that, either,” Stone admitted.

“And this amulet will keep that from happening?” Baird asked.

“As long as there are no abnormal cells in her brain when she puts the amulet on, yes,” Flynn said. “According to how Ezekiel and I have interpreted the research, we believe that it should.”

“And the synesthesia?” Baird asked.

“Is more of a phenomenon than a disease,” Flynn said. “Shouldn’t affect or be affected by what we’re talking about.”

“Well, let’s find it!” Baird said.

“You should all be aware of one thing before you throw yourselves too far into this,” Jenkins said. “The Eye of Horus has been lost for centuries. It may not be recoverable.”

At this, Ezekiel’s mouth curved into a knowing, mischievous grin. He quickly scanned the room and said, “I think I’ve almost got it.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact - I got so consumed with writing this story that I went online and bought myself an Eye of Horus necklace after writing this chapter...and then I promptly got sick, lol. Too bad mine's not filled with magic!
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading!


	6. The Return to the Library

Cassandra returned to the Library almost a month to the day following her surgery. She walked into the Annex on Stone’s arm, still slow but much more steady, and found Baird, Flynn, Ezekiel, and Jenkins all standing around the center table, waiting for them to arrive. A hastily thrown together “Welcome Back” banner hung behind them and streamers drooped from every elevated surface in the room. Cassandra couldn’t help it; she saw the results of their attempt to decorate the room and burst out laughing.

“I told you she’d think it was stupid,” Baird said, her welcoming smile dropping instantly.

"No,” Cassandra laughed. “No, it’s not stupid! It’s wonderful. It’s just a little…”

“It sucks,” Ezekiel admitted. “You can’t blame us. You’re the decorator.”

“You tried; that’s all that matters,” Cassandra asserted.

“There’s a pie in the kitchen that might be more to your liking,” Flynn admitted.

“Why didn’t we start with that? It’s never too early for…” Cassandra started. “ _Ooh_!”

Her reply was cut off as the big clippings book across from where Cassandra and Stone stood started to rattle, the telltale sign of magical mayhem that needed containing. Cassandra’s face lit up as her eyes grew wide with anticipation.

“That was fast today,” Ezekiel muttered, walking around to the book.

“So where are we…” Cassandra started excitedly. She paused, her face fell, and she corrected herself. “So where are _you_ going?”

“Belgium!” Ezekiel announced. He glanced at Cassandra for a second before he said, “It’s not too late there for waffles, right, because Belgian waffles sound _a lot_ better than pie.”

“I guess,” Cassandra muttered, looking a little gloomier than she had just a moment before. Stone shot Ezekiel a dirty look before looking to Cassandra with sympathy.

“Do you want me to stay here with ya?” Stone asked.

“No,” Cassandra said. “ _Go_. I don’t need a babysitter anymore.”

They, minus Cassandra and Jenkins, all headed for the Back Door, and Stone gave Ezekiel a shove.

“Do you have to be a jerk about it?” Stone asked.

They disappeared through the Back Door onto a street in Belgium, and Jenkins shut the door behind them. Cassandra sighed and let herself fall onto the nearest stool, her chin resting in the palm of her hand.

“Cheer up, Miss Cillian,” Jenkins said with as much positivity as Jenkins could muster. “I, for one, am quite pleased to see you back within these walls, but don’t tell any of the others I said that.”

Cassandra grinned a little as Jenkins retreated back to his lab. She decided to give herself five minutes to wallow in her fear of missing out before rediscovering all of the wonderful things her home had to offer her. When her friends returned a few hours later, Cassandra was asleep on a couch amid a pile of books, as any one thing still wasn’t able to hold her attention for more than a little while. She woke to the smell of warm, melt-y chocolate and freshly baked bread.

Cassandra shifted on the couch, let out a little moan, and sleepily muttered, “Smells like particle mechanics.”

“No, Math Girl, I’m pretty sure it smells like waffles,” Ezekiel said.

Cassandra opened her eyes and found Ezekiel holding a plate of fresh Belgian waffles with a chocolate drizzle and a dusting of sugar. She gasped and sat up, an opened book falling from her waist.

“Are these real?” she asked, making room for him to sit next to her.

“I’m not a complete asshole,” Ezekiel admitted, taking the spot that had just been cleared of books. He handed her a plastic fork, keeping a second for himself, and said, “Found a place that serves ‘em all day. Dig in.”

 

A few weeks later, Cassandra sat at the center table in the Annex, dangling her feet from a stool and reading Baird’s notes about cases she had missed over the past month. Suddenly, Baird and Stone burst through the back door. Baird was calling her name before they even made it back to the Annex, and Cassandra stood quickly.

“I’m right here,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s a maze,” Stone said.

“What is?” Cassandra asked.

“The village,” Stone said. “It’s a maze, and Jones and Flynn are trapped.”

“Like the labyrinth?” Cassandra wondered.

“More like _Harry Potter_ ,” Stone said.

Off Cassandra’s confused look, Baird explained, “Flynn believes the artifact he’s chasing is buried under the town hall, which is in the center of the village, but the artifact has turned the village into a giant maze, or it already was a giant maze…”

“We’re not really sure,” Stone said. “Flynn waited until Baird’s back was turned and then took off without really knowin’ what he was doin’, and Jones decided to play Guardian and ran after him.”

“And now they are in there somewhere and have no idea how to either reach the artifact _or_ get out, and if we go in…”

“We’ll probably get lost, too,” Stone admitted.

“What can I do?” Cassandra asked. “I’m stuck here, remember?”

Stone pulled out his cell phone and pulled it into a laptop sitting on the table in front of Cassandra. He pulled up a series of images. “Jones hacked the nearest satellite and got these,” he said. “They’re not great, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“And these are the coordinates of the town hall,” Baird said, pulling out a piece of paper full of Baird’s scribbled notes.

"But how can I help if I don’t know where they are?” Cassandra said.

Baird moved in front of the laptop and typed in a few commands. A map of the area appeared, a blinking orange dot in the middle. “I put a tracer on Ezekiel’s cell a long time ago.”

“Wh – did you do that to all of us?” Cassandra asked.

"That’s not important right now,” Baird said, pointing at the dot. “That’s where they are. Flynn claims to have no idea how he got there.”

“Couldn’t you follow the trace to get to them?” Cassandra asked.

“And have four of us lost?” Stone asked. “Come on, Cassie, if anyone can make sense of this, it’s you.”

Cassandra stared at the materials in front of her for a few minutes, zooming in and out of the satellite images. “Yes,” she finally said. “Yes, there’s a pattern in the walls of the maze. It’s…my brain know it’s there, but I can’t see…”

“Can you crack it?” Baird asked a few moments after she trailed off.

“I think so. I’m a little rusty,” Cassandra said sheepishly. “Can you tell them to stop moving?”

Baird sent Flynn a text. The orange dot on the screen stopped moving about half a minute later. “Done,” Baird said. “What kind of pattern?”

“It’s complicated. I…I would do better if I were in it; my brain would be able to see it better if I were actually experiencing it, but…give me a minute.”

“Take your time,” Stone said.

“There are five…no…six…rectangular patterns in the walls of the maze repeating at rates varying between…” Cassandra muttered, the world around her disappearing.

Cassandra worked the mathematics in her head while numbers slowly filled the space around her, her fingers tracing the images as she went. For the first time in years, however, the numbers weren’t flying in random floods around her head; they were structured and orderly…everything in its proper place, and she was focused, easily working through the equations and patterns she saw.

Baird and Stone waited cautiously as she muttered about vertices and rectangles, and as the cadence of her speech quickened and she sank deeper into the math, Stone instinctively reached out his arms, ready to catch her if the equations overwhelmed her. Cassandra visibly braced herself for the headache that never came. The headaches had stopped exactly eight days previously, exactly within the time frame Dr. Shepherd had given her for how long it would take for bone to heal. After a short while, Cassandra pointed at the orange dot on the laptop monitor, and the numbers that surrounded her faded away.

“I’ve got it,” she said triumphantly. “I can get them out, or I can get you to them and then get all of you out.” She paused and inhaled lightly. “Huh…blueberries…anyway, which would you prefer?”

“ _Cassandra_ ,” Stone said, a look of wonder on his face.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“Do you even realize what you just did?” he asked.

Off of Baird and Stone’s delighted expressions, she paused and recognized what had just happened: complicated equations, no hallucinations, no crippling headaches, and math that still smelled like breakfast. Her hand instinctively flew to her face, brushing the bridge between her nose and her upper lip. When her fingers came back clean with no traces of blood, her eyes welled up with tears.

“Oh my god,” Cassandra said softly. The scan Dr. Shepherd had brought in after the surgery showed her that her tumor was gone, but this…this had _proved_ the tumor in her brain was no more. “Oh my god!”

The last exclamation came out as a squeal as she instinctively flung herself into Stone’s still watchfully outstretched arms. The force of her body against his chest was so great and so unexpected that he lost his footing and they rotated just a bit, pivoting as his arms tightened around her middle. He returned her feet to the ground and she pulled back, blushing all over again. She instantly reached for the nearest seat, and he helped her sit down.

“Too much?” he asked.

"I’m going to learn to stop doing that eventually,” she said, holding her head as the dizziness subsided. “I’m sorry; I got a little too excited.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” Stone assured her. “You alright?”

Cassandra nodded and looked at Baird. “Flynn knew that that’s what it could be like, didn’t he?” she asked. “ _The Library_ knew…that’s what he meant when he said I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t know?” Baird asked.

“I haven’t been able to do anything like that since I was twelve,” Cassandra admitted. She snapped quickly back to the situation at hand and downloaded the images from Stone’s cell phone. She passed it back to him and said, “Go. I can navigate from here.”

 

As she was nearing two months post-op, Cassandra had officially gotten bored. Sometimes she got to help with a case, as she had helped get Flynn and Ezekiel out of the unexpected maze, and being at the Library all day was better than being stuck at home or stuck in a Seattle hotel room, but her part in a case was often short-lived and over quickly since she couldn’t do much but listen to stories or answer STEM-related inquiries, leaving Cassandra with more free time than she knew what to do with. One afternoon, she was alone; they had all left early that morning on some mysterious mission they had refused to tell her anything about, and Jenkins had spent all day locked up in his lab (lest he’d admit to something he shouldn’t, Cassandra suspiciously thought,) so Cassandra wandered through the Library, marveling at just how expansive the collection was.

She didn’t think she had ever been this deep into the Library before. She didn’t have a destination in mind; she wasn’t looking for anything in particular, so it was almost becoming a game to her: seeing how far she could go. It had to end eventually, she thought. Instead of journeying to the ends of the Earth like her friends might very well be doing, she would just journey to the ends of the Library.

A section across the room caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She wandered over, feeling an instinctual draw towards the stack of old books. The nameplate at the end of the aisle labeled the shelf as being the home to books about magic. Cassandra peered down the seemingly endless aisle, shocked at its size and wondering if this is where the book she’d found in the bag Ezekiel had put together for her had come from.

“All of these are about magic?” she wondered out loud to herself.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to turn away, looking forward down the Library’s center aisle again. The thought was preposterous; she was a scientist. Cassandra had been drawn to magic in the beginning because she had hoped it would cure her, but _science_ cured her. She didn’t need magic anymore.

But discovering magic was actually real was undoubtedly a highlight of her life. It was easier for her to accept than it probably would be for most of the people in the world who lived their lives for science and math, but she was never really like them anyway. Scientists and mathematicians, she found, liked concrete answers and solvable mysteries. They liked black and white, but Cassandra had learned early on that the world was filled with gray, and magic…well, magic was gray, green, purple, and every color in between.

But scientists and mathematicians…they also liked knowledge. They liked to be prepared, and, as soon as Dr. Shepherd cleared her for ‘field work,’ she’d be back out there, tracking down the magic that had escaped into the world. That thought, combined with the sudden memory of the little purple bauble of magic from a case full of fairytales still bouncing and floating in a mason jar in her bedroom, was why Cassandra caught herself peering down the aisle of magic books again. Personal need notwithstanding, magic was her life and her job, so, Cassandra reasoned, she should probably learn a little more about it.

She quickly glanced over her shoulder – she knew she was alone in the Library, but she felt the need to check anyway – and disappeared down the magic corridor.

 

The three-month post-op milestone had come and gone, and Cassandra had thrown herself into research. When she was alone, she read about magic: where it came from, when it had disappeared from the world, and, most interestingly, theories on how to harness it, but when someone was around, she worked out mathematical equations to keep her brain sharp and continually prove to herself that the tumor really was gone, or she read original notes for scientific experiments she had only read about in textbooks. She still missed the field, but she was due to see Dr. Shepherd in just three more weeks, so she knew she’d be back out saving the world soon enough. Until then, she had grown much more content with her life within the Library’s walls.

Baird and Flynn returned to the Library from a case they had taken the day before, just the two of them. Stone and Ezekiel had also run off on their own that morning, refusing to answer questions when Cassandra remarked how odd of a willing pairing the two of them made, which meant Cassandra had been on her own for hours. Baird and Flynn made their way from the Annex to the Library to return a pair of swords that had proven mighty useful on their quest when they found Cassandra sleeping, her head lying on an open book at the edge of a long table.

"Oh, _shh_!” Baird warned Flynn as she rounded the corner and discovered the sleeping redhead. Flynn smiled.

“It’s kind of cute,” Flynn said. “How she’s always falling asleep in books.”

Baird let out a hushed chuckle and took a closer look at Cassandra, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her something was wrong. She slept on a book among piles of other books, her hand resting on what looked like, from Baird’s vantage point, a stack of papers on the table…the table with a rapidly growing brown puddle beneath it. Baird took a few steps closer and realized streams of colors were slowly dripping from the papers underneath Cassandra’s hand to the floor beside her feet.

“Flynn?” Baird asked. “Why is the table bleeding rainbows?”

Baird turned to meet Flynn’s eyes and found that concern had washed over Flynn’s face. Realizing that magic was at play, they both raced to Cassandra and began trying to wake her, fearful that she was unconscious by something other than choice.

“Cassandra,” Flynn called, shaking her gently.

“Cassandra, wake up,” Baird ordered, shaking her just a little bit harder.

Their worries were temporarily assuaged as Cassandra easily, albeit grumpily, awoke.

“What’s going…” Cassandra muttered, waking with a shock as Baird shook her awake. “Oh, hey guys.”

“Are you alright?” Baird asked.

“Yeah, I’m just tired,” Cassandra said. With a sigh, she added, “Like usual these days.”

Her hand moved from the stack of papers that Baird had just discovered was actually a calendar, and the colored inks running off the pages seemingly disappeared. Baird swiped the calendar, and she and Flynn took seats at the table across from Cassandra.

Baird glanced at Flynn, and Flynn gave her a little nod, giving her permission to start the conversation. “What have you been doing today, Cassandra?”

“Um…well, I was charting stars. I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and I usually end up outside looking at the stars, but I can’t really just look at the stars because I look up into the night sky and see patterns…tons of _beautiful_ patterns, so I wanted to get some of them down on paper,” Cassandra explained. “I pulled the calendar off a wall to serve as a reference point for phases of the moon since the skies are in my head, but the dates are escaping me. I would put it back, but I’m not sure I quite remember where I found it…”

“That’s alright,” Baird said. “Keep going.”

At this, Cassandra began to look a little nervous. She glanced back and forth between Baird and Flynn a few times, confusion filling her face, and continued, “Well, I eventually got bored with that since my attention span is still kind of all wonky from the medicine, so I started trying to read, but I kept getting distracted because the calendar is just _all wrong_.”

“Wrong?” Flynn asked. “Wrong how?”

“Well, like…the blocks for this month are printed in red, but July’s not red, and normally, I can tune stuff like that out, but today, it was really distracting me because it’s just not right. July’s not red. It’s…” Cassandra started.

“Blue,” Baird finished, looking at the calendar she had opened to July.

“Yes!” Cassandra said with excitement. “An azure blue, like the sky on a perfect summer beach day. How did you know that?”

Baird and the Flynn looked down at the opened calendar between them and then at each other. Baird flipped a few pages and said, “Just out of curiosity, what color is April?”

“Purple,” Cassandra replied. “Kind of like a pastel lilac color.”

Flynn flipped a few more pages and asked, “And October?”

“About the same color as my hair,” Cassandra said. “Okay, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

Baird flipped the calendar back to the current month and turned it around so Cassandra could see what they were seeing. The red ink that filed the month heading and outlined the boxes that made up the days of July had begun running down the page, leaving Cassandra’s azure blue in its place. Despite the ink that had been dripping from the pages just a few minutes before, the pages were dry. About three-quarters of the page had turned blue, while the lines that made up the last quarter remained red. Cassandra’s eyes widened, and she lunged for the calendar.

“It’s all right now,” she muttered as she flipped through the pages.

“I think it’s time you tell us what you’ve been doing with all of these magic books,” Baird said. Cassandra looked up at her, shell-shocked. Baird nodded and said, “Yeah, we know about that.”

“I was just reading,” Cassandra said. “Studying, really. Why is nobody researching magic, exactly? I thought it might be a good idea to gain an understanding of what lies at the core of our work here. Math and science and history and gadgets and all of that good stuff may help us find what we’re looking for or accomplish a task, but how can I hunt something I don’t understand? Colonel Baird trained us by running field drills, and that was important for our survival, but…this seems important, too.”

“Looks like you’ve got a pretty good grasp on things,” Baird said, gesturing towards the calendar again. Cassandra froze.

“You think I did this? How…how could I have done this? I was just thinking that the colors were wrong, but I didn’t…I didn’t _do_ anything,” Cassandra rambled. “I…I wouldn’t know how to do anything like that.”

Flynn loudly cleared his throat and nodded toward Cassandra’s arm. “Your hand.”

Cassandra pulled up the hand that had been resting on the calendar as she slept. Her palm was filled with colors, stained by the ink that had instantly dried as soon as she broke the connection. Cassandra gasped.

“How could…I don’t understand,” Cassandra panicked. She nearly squeaked when she said, “I’m harnessing _magic_?”

“Unintentionally, but yes,” Flynn said simply.

“How? I’m…I’m just reading,” she repeated. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just…trying to understand the origins, and…”

“The ability to do magic may likely come with gaining an understanding of it,” Flynn revealed. Off Cassandra’s confused look, he continued. “Magic has been popularized as something innate, something that requires native power and silly wands or absurd rhyming spells, but that’s not true. That’s not how it works. Magic can be learned.”

“It can?” Cassandra asked quietly.

“Magic is not always cast in spells, Cassandra. Sometimes it acts upon the will of a sharp mind,” Flynn explained. “It would seem that you have a natural predisposition for magical abilities, but with gifts like your enviable intellect, it might not take much more than the ability to imagine the effect you wish to achieve with magic and an understanding of how to control it to master the craft of using it.”

“Okay, your words sound good, but your voice says bad. Am I wrong for thinking that learning how to use it so we can hunt it doesn’t seem like the craziest idea in the world?” Cassandra asked hesitantly.

“It’s not a crazy idea,” Flynn said.

“It’s not the best idea,” Baird cut in.

“It’s a smart idea,” Flynn continued. “It just leaves you a little more vulnerable than the others if that’s the path you want to go down.”

“And you should really think about whether or not you want to go down that path,” Baird said, the disapproval radiating off her face.

“Am I in trouble?” Cassandra asked hesitantly.

“No,” Flynn said quickly.

“But you should be careful,” Baird said.

“Right. Don’t go delving too far into this without some guidance,” Flynn commanded.

Cassandra nodded. After a beat, Flynn and Baird stood to return to their post-mission tasks, leaving a flummoxed Cassandra at the table, her eyes transfixed by her stained palm.

 

A few days later, Stone was standing in an aisle of books in the Library, casually leafing through a history book, when he heard a familiar voice muttering to herself. He thought he was alone in the Library, so, assuming she had made the same supposition, he pulled a couple books off of one of the shelves and peered through the newly created hole. Cassandra was sitting on a couch one aisle over, surrounded by books. The only empty space on the furniture was the place she was currently sitting in.

She had angled her body on the couch to be facing in his general direction, so he ducked a little off to the side, watching her with a fond smile on his face as she balanced a piece of paper on top of the stack of books next to her. The smile turned to puzzlement as she, with a touch of hesitation, put her palms, face-down, onto the piece of paper and pulled them back with a sigh a few seconds later. She repeated the steps, but this time, she pulled her hands away with a groan.

“ _Work_ ,” she muttered with frustration. “Come on…”

She held her hands out again, talking to herself as her palms lay face-down on the paper.

“You did it before, and you didn’t even know you were doing it, so _come on_ ,” she muttered, slamming her hands onto the page.

After another few seconds, Cassandra gave up whatever she was trying to do, and Stone watched as she balled up the paper and grabbed a book with a disgruntled sigh. The smile returned to Stone’s face, and he replaced the books in his makeshift peephole. Stone returned to his history book, and the two read on opposite sides of the aisle, Cassandra none the wiser that she wasn’t alone.

Cassandra’s scream pierced the peaceful silence just a few minutes later, and, at the sound of a book slamming against the shelf, Stone snapped his own book shut and rounded the corner. Her head shot up at the sound of footsteps, and she looked at him for just a moment with wide eyes before dissolving into tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“When is this going to be over?” she cried.

He walked over to the couch and crouched down so he was more on her level. “When is what going to be over?” he asked softly.

“ _This_ ,” she said, pointing to her head with both hands. “I still can’t read for more than a few minutes without getting distracted.”

“That’s the medicine, Cassandra,” he told her. “Don’t beat yourself up over that.”

“Why is this taking so long? I can’t do _anything_!” she cried. “I don’t feel normal, Stone. It’s been three months, and nothing feels normal.”

“But you feel alright, though, right?” he asked with concern.

She nodded. “It’s not like that. I just don’t…”

“Things just don’t feel normal; I get it,” he replied. She continued to cry, and he placed a hand on her knee. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

His initial attempts at comforting her only seemed to make her cry harder. Desperate to do something to help her, he stood up, scooped her off the couch, and sat back down with Cassandra on his lap. She instantly twisted her body and curled her arm around his neck, crying into his shirt. He held onto her and let her cry, rubbing small, soothing circles against the back of her sweater. Stone looked at the watch around his wrist. Jenkins had reported that Cassandra usually wandered off to take a nap about this time of day, so Stone knew she was probably tired.

“C’mon Cassie, calm down,” he whispered after a few minutes.

She kept her head buried in his shoulder, but moved her hand from around his body to wipe her cheeks. “All I’m doing is crying in front of you guys lately,” she murmured.

“That’s okay,” he assured her.

“No, it’s embarrassing,” she replied. “I should be feeling so much better by now.”

“I don’t think that’s true, but you’re going to see Dr. Shepherd soon, right? She can give you some answers,” he said. His statement was intended to be reassuring, but based on Cassandra’s reaction, it had the opposite effect. “What? You like Dr. Shepherd.”

“She’s gonna do an MRI,” Cassandra cried. “It could be back.”

“I watched you figure out some longitudinal…something in four seconds flat yesterday,” Stone said. “You know it’s not back.”

“But it could come back, and I could have to do this all over again,” she said. “I can’t imagine doing this again, Stone.”

“We’re workin’ on it; you’re not gonna have to do this again,” Stone said.

“What?” Cassandra asked, picking her head up.

Stone realized he had nearly broken the agreement not to tell Cassandra about the search for the Egyptian amulet until they had it in their hands. “I just mean you can’t live like that, Cassandra. We can’t let ourselves think something like that, but it’s okay to be scared.”

“Will you come with me in a few weeks?” she tearfully asked, thankfully not investigating further into what Stone had said. “To the appointment?”

“’Course,” he promised. “In the meantime, how about I read to you? Close your eyes; just listen. Don’t worry about followin’ the story.”

“Really?” she asked. He nodded. “Okay…just read me whatever you were reading.”

She made no move to slide off his lap, and he didn’t bring it up, either, as she sunk into his embrace and laid her head on his shoulder. He opened his book and started reading out loud. Once she had fallen asleep, Stone set the book aside and reached for the balled up paper next to him. He smoothed it out as best he could with one hand and frowned. The page was covered in numbers, written in Cassandra’s handwriting in colorful inks, but none of them corresponded to the colors he knew she correlated to each digit.

Colonel Baird walked by about twenty minutes later. She noticed Stone and Cassandra out of the corner of her eye and abruptly changed course, making her way towards the couch with one eyebrow raised.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Stone whispered.

“Oh?” Baird asked, matching Stone’s tone. “It looks like cuddling.”

“She was upset; she fell asleep,” Stone said. “Now I don’t want to risk wakin’ her up.”

“Sure,” Baird said, nodding knowingly.

Stone, deciding to ignore the teasing, held out the paper full of numbers. “Do you know what this might be about?”

Baird took the paper from the hands and examined it. “What is this?”

“I don’t know, but those colors don’t match how she sees those numbers,” Stone said.

“What was she doing?” Baird asked.

“She just had her hands on there, mumbling something about how it wasn’t workin’,” Stone revealed. “Something that had worked before...”

Baird’s face fell as she realized that their talk with Flynn had seemingly done nothing but spur her on, and Cassandra had been intentionally trying to magically manipulate the colors on the page. “Oh, crap,” Baird sighed, clenching the page into her fist. She headed purposefully back down the aisle and turned towards the Annex instead of her former destination.

“Wait, what…” Stone started, feeling more out of the loop than ever. He sighed when he realized he couldn’t exactly call after her. He glanced down at the woman sleeping on his shoulder and muttered, “What are you into, huh?”

 

The silence of the Annex was pierced by the rumble of the Back Door as it deposited Flynn, Baird, Ezekiel, and Stone back into the Portland base of operations. Dressed for a mission in the Egyptian desert, they came back covered in dirt and bruises. A gash on Stone’s forehead bled down his tired face. Swords dangled from his and Flynn’s hands. The Eye of Horus amulet rested protectively in Ezekiel’s cupped palms.

“Everyone okay?” Baird asked, dusting off her clothes.

“Cassandra!” Ezekiel called. “Oi! Cassandra, where are you?”

“Miss Cillian isn’t here,” Jenkins said, entering the room. He frowned at the all of the dirt that had arrived through the backdoor with the foursome. “She left in a cab a few hours ago.”

“Where is she?” Stone asked.

“She said she needed to lie down, and she wanted to do it in her own bed,” Jenkins said.

“Well, somebody call her and tell her to come back here,” Ezekiel said, his voice dripping with urgency.

“She can’t drive yet, remember?” Stone said. “I brought her here this mornin’.”

“Well, go get her, and bring her back,” Ezekiel said.

Sensing a fight about to break out between the two men, Flynn stepped between them and said, “Guys, how about we go to her?”

Fifteen minutes later, they were clustered outside of Cassandra’s apartment. Ezekiel immediately started banging on her door.

“Would you calm down? She’s probably asleep,” Stone asked. “I’ve got a key.”

“ _Still_?” Baird asked with yet another raised eyebrow.

“No time for that, mate,” Ezekiel said, banging on the door again. “Cassandra!”

A feminine groan from behind the door filled their ears as the doorknob turned. Ezekiel lowered his hand and took a small step backwards.

" _Oh my gosh, what_ …” Cassandra started in an annoyed tone as she swung the door open. She quickly took in the state of the four friends outside her door, her face filling with alarm, and finished with, “ _In the world_ happened to you guys?”

“Long story,” Ezekiel said quickly. He held out the amulet and said, “Put this on.”

“What?” Cassandra asked, making no move to take the amulet. “What is that?”

Flynn pushed his way to the front of the group and took the necklace from Ezekiel’s hand. “Hello, Cassandra,” he said. “May we please come in?”

“Sure,” Cassandra said, her statement coming out more like a question as she stepped aside to let them in.

The four shuffled into Cassandra’s apartment, and Cassandra ran her hands against her head, smoothing her hair down. She was dressed in pajamas and clearly not expecting the entire team to show up at her door.

“We woke you up, didn’t we?” Baird asked. Cassandra nodded. “Sorry.”

“Um…that’s okay,” she said. “But you’ve got me a little nervous, so if someone could please tell me what’s going on?”

“We got this for you,” Ezekiel said, taking the amulet out of Flynn’s hands again. “And you need to put it on right now.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked.

Flynn sat her down at the small table just outside of the kitchen and pulled out another chair, taking a seat across from her. He calmly explained what the amulet was and what it could do for her. Cassandra’s face slowly transformed from confusion to astonishment as he spoke.

“So that’s it?” she asked in a small voice. “It’s that easy? Wear that, and no more brain tumor? Not ever?”

“There are no certainties with magic, of course, but yes, we believe that’s how it would work,” Flynn said.

She looked at the amulet in Flynn’s hand. It looked old, and it seemed big, and it was going to be hard to match with her clothes, and wearing something like that all the time was going to take some getting used to, but she nodded. Cassandra tilted her head down and pulled her hair away from her neck, holding it in a pile on the top of her head. Flynn reached around and secured the amulet around her neck. A soft glow emanated from the jewelry as the latch was fastened, and Cassandra moaned slightly, gripping the side of the table.

“You okay?” Baird asked.

“Yeah, it was just this sensation,” she said. “That felt funny; is that okay?”

Flynn nodded. “That’s the influence of the artifact,” he said. Cassandra looked slightly worried, and Flynn added, “Don’t worry; they’re not all bad.”

Cassandra stared down at the symbol around her neck, her fingertip tracing it lightly. “Where did you say this came from?”

“Ancient Egypt,” Stone replied.

Cassandra’s head shot up and found Ezekiel. “You,” she said.

“What about me?” Ezekiel asked.

"This was you,” Cassandra said. “That’s why you were reading about Ancient Egypt in the hotel in Seattle and why you kept flaking out on your turns to hang out with me, and that’s why you lied that day. I thought you were being a jerk, but you’re still trying to help me.”

“Yeah, that’s all true,” Ezekiel shrugged.

Cassandra stood up, let an emotional sob escape her lips, and threw herself around Ezekiel. He briefly hugged her back but pushed her away after a few seconds.

“Okay, that’s enough…” Ezekiel said. “I mean, it’s pretty apparent how awesome I am; hugs aren’t necessary.” Cassandra pulled away from him with a small chuckle.

“He had help, you know,” Stone grumbled, and Cassandra immediately turned to him.

“Of course he did. Thank yo…oh my god, you’re bleeding,” Cassandra started, reaching out to hug Stone as well. She stopped herself halfway as she noticed the gash on his forehead; her hands settled against his cheeks.

“I’m alright,” he muttered.

“I’ll get the peroxide,” Baird said, wandering down the hall to Cassandra’s bathroom.

Cassandra ushered Stone to sit down in the seat she had vacated and said, “Judging from your looks, I’m guessing this was a tricky one?”

“That thing’s been lost for centuries,” Ezekiel said.

“How long have you been working on this?” Cassandra asked. Much of her surgical experience ran together in her mind; she knew she didn’t have a great sense of time for the past few months.

“Since the day you were discharged from the hospital and I learned the brain grape might come back,” Ezekiel admitted. “Flynn helped me research artifacts to find something that might help, and we zeroed in on that one the next day.”

Baird returned with peroxide, cotton swabs, and bandages, and Cassandra moved towards Stone to clean his wound. He reached up and told her he could take care of it. She slapped his hand away.

“You’ve been taking care of me for weeks; shut up and let me do it,” Cassandra said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stone replied, prompting another look between Baird and Flynn.

Cassandra quickly cleaned and bandaged the wound on Stone’s head and turned around to lean against the edge of her table. She had Stone on one side and Flynn on the other, with Baird and Ezekiel standing in front of them, all of them bruised or bloodied or looking like they’d just been through hell to procure this tiny bit of magic for her. Cassandra fingered the foreign-feeling amulet against her neck with one hand and felt her eyes well up with tears.

“What’s wrong?” Stone asked as he gently gripped the arm nearest him with his hand.

“Nothing,” Cassandra said, a glittering smile filling her face. “I just don’t know what I did to deserve all of you.”

 

A few weeks later, Stone and Cassandra were back in an exam room at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The appointment had started, much to Cassandra’s disdain, with a follow-up MRI scan. After the scan was over and Cassandra had re-dressed in her regular clothes, she took a seat on the exam table, while Stone sat off to the side, and they waited for Amelia to appear. A knock on the door came a short while later.

“How’s my favorite patient?” Amelia asked, entering the room.

“We heard about your brother,” Cassandra said, referring to Derek’s sudden death just a few short months ago. “I’m so sorry.”

Amelia took a deep breath and, after a few quiet moments, said, “Yeah. Me too.” Eager to change the subject, she added, “Now…how have the last few months been for you?”

Stone joined Amelia and Cassandra for a conversation about the past few months. Amelia assured Cassandra that she was still doing wonderfully and everything with her recovery was going well. She gave Cassandra clearance to drive and to go back to work, eliciting smiles from both of the other occupants in the room. Amelia had then moved on to inspecting the surgical area. Stone sat off to the side as Amelia examined Cassandra, smiling in reassurance every time Cassandra glanced over at him.

“Okay, everything up here looks great,” Amelia said, snapping her latex glove off. She turned to Stone and said, “If you could just wait outside while I have a minute alone with Cassandra…”

Cassandra swallowed heavily and glanced at Stone with fearful eyes. Both she and Stone were acutely aware of the fact that the new MRI had not yet been mentioned, and Stone instantly jumped from his chair, coming to stand by Cassandra’s side. His hands immediately found her, one on Cassandra’s back and one gripping hers.

“Why do I need to leave?” Stone asked firmly.

Cassandra squeezed Stone’s hand. “Go,” she said softly.

“What? No,” Stone said. “I’m not leavin’ you.”

“It’s okay,” she promised him. With a shaky voice, she added, “I’m okay. Go.”

With another squeeze to Cassandra’s hand and a glare in Amelia’s direction, Stone exited the exam room, strongly shutting the door behind him. Amelia flinched a bit at the force with which the door slammed shut while Cassandra’s fingers played together against her chest, her eyes transfixed upon them.

“How big is it?” she asked quietly, her hands dropping to her lap. “The new tumor…how big is it? And…please don’t relate it to food.”

“What? Oh, no…gosh, no. Cassandra, if there were a new tumor, I would’ve started with that. I wouldn’t have spent the past ten minutes telling you how perfect you are,” Amelia said. “You’re still tumor-free.”

“I am?” Cassandra asked.

“Yeah,” Amelia said. She pointed to herself and added, “ _Rock star_ , remember?”

"Then why did you…?” Cassandra asked, pointing towards the door that Stone had just slammed shut.

“Oh, I just want to know if he’s kissed you yet,” Amelia revealed with a grin.

Shock filled Cassandra’s face as her eyes grew wide and she squeaked, “What?”

The smile on Amelia’s face faded. “That must be a no, then.”

"Why do you think Stone wants to kiss me?” Cassandra asked.

“You heard how hard he just slammed that door, right?” Amelia asked.

Cassandra nervously chuckled, looking towards the door. “That doesn’t mean that he…he’s very protective.”

“He’s been taking care of you,” Amelia said.

“They all have,” Cassandra shrugged.

“But him more than the others, right?”

Cassandra thought about the last three months for a moment and said, “Well, I guess maybe…he was probably there the most. How did you know that?”

“He just had that _look_ when we took you to the OR,” Amelia said. “That scared-to-death-but-oh-my-god-this-is-going-to- _work_ look, and it’s been my experience that you only get that look when you’re facing an extended lifetime with someone you don’t want to imagine living without.”

“Really?” Cassandra asked. Her eyes kept darting to the door, as if she were looking for Stone to gauge his reaction to what Amelia was saying. She thought for sure Amelia was going to tell her the tumor was back; she knew Stone thought the same. He was probably pacing back and forth right outside the door.

“I thought for sure he’d kiss you as soon as you felt a little better,” Amelia said. “There was nothing during the past few months?”

“Well, I don’ t know…” Cassandra said, suddenly re-evaluating everything that had happened between herself and Stone. “We slept in the same bed a few times during the recovery, but so have Baird and I, since only Ezekiel insisted upon refusing my offer to share the bed, and he sent me these beautiful flowers, and he was so patient, and I guess we did end up kind of cuddling that one time in the Library, and…oh, there was that thing with the shower…”

“What?” Amelia laughed with a raised eyebrow.

Cassandra groaned. “It wasn’t really like that. I got ambitious and _stupid_ , and he was the one there, so he had to help me, and I…don’t know why I’m telling you any of this.”

Amelia shrugged. “We get pretty personal around here; it’s normal,” she said. Cassandra nodded, her mind racing, and grinned softly. Amelia caught her and said, “What is it?”

Cassandra shrugged and fingered the ancient Eye of Horus amulet that had been hanging around her neck for the past week. “Nothing,” she said. “Just thinking.”

“That’s quite a necklace,” Amelia said, her eyes drawn to it as Cassandra nervously played with it. “What’s it mean?”

“Oh, thanks,” Cassandra laughed, her cheeks flushing pink. “It’s not really my style. It’s an ancient Egyptian symbol supposed to bring safety and wellbeing.”

“It looks old,” Amelia remarked.

“Oh, it’s uh…it’s modeled after the original,” Cassandra lied. “That probably seems silly to you, right?”

“No,” Amelia said. “It’s cool. And…” She hung Cassandra’s latest MRI on the wall. It looked like the post-op one, normal and tumor-free. “It’s working for you so far. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and the magic will turn out to be real.”

"There aren’t any abnormal cells in there, right?” Cassandra asked, scrutinizing the MRI.

“Not that I can see,” Amelia assured her.

Cassandra smiled knowingly and nodded, playing with the necklace again. “Then maybe it will.”

 

Stone was, in fact, standing right outside the door when Cassandra finally emerged, her hair rearranged to cover the surgical side of her head. He desperately wanted to ask her what had happened after Amelia had thrown him out, but he fought his instincts and let Cassandra take the lead. They walked a few paces in silence before Cassandra grabbed Stone’s hand and looped her arm through his, walking arm-in-arm as they headed down the hospital hallway.

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

“Yes, but hospitals, even when I’m fine, have a tendency to make me a little unsteady,” she replied. “If you don’t mind…”

Stone rubbed his hand soothingly over hers and left it resting on the top of her hand, silently telling her he didn’t mind at all. He couldn’t take it any longer and asked, “So, uh…what’d Dr. Shepherd want to talk to you about?”

“Oh, that was…girl stuff,” Cassandra said. “There’s no tumor.”

Stone let out a sigh of relief. “So you’re okay?”

“I’m wonderful,” she said, smiling at him. “Thank you, Jacob.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For coming with me today and for comforting me a few weeks ago and for the flowers when I got home…for _everything_ ,” she said. “I still don’t quite feel normal, but I feel like this thing, the whole surgery thing, kind of this whole brain tumor thing, is actually behind me now, and I just wanted to tell you that you’ve been _amazing_ , and I’m very appreciative of that, especially since I know you were scared, too.”

He laughed, his nerves still heightened from the fear that came with Amelia asking to talk to Cassandra alone. “I can stop bein’ scared now, right?” he asked.

“There’s no tumor; I’ve got the amulet. It’s over,” Cassandra said in a low voice. As they approached the elevator, she returned her voice to its normal level and finished with, “But seriously, you dropped everything for, like, a month to take care of me, and I wasn’t always nice, but you were. You were great, so thank you.”

Stone unlinked their arms and reached around behind her to push the button when they arrived at the hospital elevator, his other hand gently gripping hers to maintain her sense of security. The hand that had pressed the button came to rest protectively on her waist, and he stood behind her, waiting for the elevator to arrive. When it did, he dropped her hand, they waited for the elevator to empty, and he ushered her inside with a hand on her back.

“You’re welcome, darlin’,” Stone said sincerely as they entered the vacated elevator. “But, just so you know, if keepin’ you around meant a couple months of droppin’ everything to take care of you…it was worth it.”

She turned around to look at him, his words reminding her of what Dr. Shepherd had told her about the look on Stone’s face when she went to the OR four months ago. Suddenly, when she turned, the hand that had been resting protectively on the small of her back was around her. Stone was already looking at her when Cassandra took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to meet his.

Neither of them knew who made the first move, but their lips collided in time with the elevator doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter, and then we're done with this story :)


	7. One Year Later...

One year later, Amelia peeked into the gallery connected to OR 1, and found her sister-in-law sitting in a chair in the front row, watching a colleague perform a procedure. The procedure was a pretty standard one, so, other than a resident and an off-duty intern, Meredith was the only person in the gallery. Upon spotting Meredith, Amelia strode confidently into the room, a smile on her face and a skip in her step.

“Hey,” Amelia said, taking a seat next to the other woman.

“Hey,” Meredith replied suspiciously. “What’s got you so happy?”

"Do you remember the neuro patient last spring…the magic synesthete and the band of misfits who lied their asses off to get her here?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah,” Meredith said. With a little gasp and a look of concern, Meredith added, “Oh no, she’s not back, is she?”

“No,” Amelia said. “Magic necklace, remember?”

“Oh, come on, you don’t really believe that necklace will stop a brain tumor from returning, do you?” Meredith asked.

“No…maybe…I don’t know,” Amelia said, changing her answer every few seconds. Off Meredith’s look of disbelief, Amelia asked, “ _What_?”

“Magic is a load of crap,” Meredith said. “It’s legends and fairytales.”

“Yeah, but she practically threw that thing back around her neck when I pulled her out of the MRI machine last March, so it seems like _they_ believe it,” Amelia said.

“She’s the patient,” Meredith said. “She’s superstitious.”

“They’re pretty intelligent people to whole-heartedly believe such a thing, though,” Amelia said.

“Fear will do that to you,” Meredith argued.

“True,” Amelia admitted. The smile returned to her face as she said, “But I bet you ten bucks she wears it at the wedding.”

“What wedding?” Meredith asked.

“The magic synesthete and the cowboy are getting married,” Amelia said, triumphantly dropping the invitation in Meredith’s lap. “I told you he loved her.”

“Did you know they were together?” Meredith asked.

“No,” Amelia laughed. She pointed at the piece of paper in Meredith’s hands. “That was a total surprise. Well…not really, but…you know.”

Meredith scanned the invitation. “And they invited you?”

“It was in the mail this morning,” she said. “Check the note on the back.”

Meredith flipped the invitation over and read the handwritten note from Stone out loud. “‘Dr. Shepherd, you gave me a longer forever with Cassie. You should be there to witness the start of it. Stone,’” she said. She laughed and said, “Cheesy, but I like it. Are you going?”

“Only three hours away? _Hell yes_ ,” Amelia said.

“This is about the necklace again, isn’t it?” Meredith asked.

“What kind of library needs NATO security?” Amelia asked.

“Every time she comes in…” Meredith sighed, having heard the same questions a handful of times before.

“Or employs an _art thief_?” Amelia continued.

“You don’t think it’s a little weird that you’ve Googled all of them?” Meredith asked.

“Last time I thought there was something up with them, I was right,” Amelia pointed out.

“I can’t believe you’re still talking about this,” Meredith said.

“Well, hey, I was going to ask you to be my date, but if that’s how you feel about it…” Amelia said. She made a show of taking the invitation back and starting to waltz out of the room.

“You don’t want to take Owen?” Meredith asked. Amelia returned.

“I thought it could be fun,” Amelia said. “Girls’ day…road trip…”

“Find some magic along the way,” Meredith teased.

"If it happens, it happens,” Amelia said, putting her hands up in surrender. “You coming or not?”

“I don’t know, Amelia,” Meredith sighed. “A _wedding_?”

Amelia noticed the sudden cloud of melancholy surrounding her sister-in-law and softly said, “It’s been almost a year and a half, Mer.”

“I know,” Meredith sadly mumbled.

“Hey, you know what? I’ll take Owen,” Amelia offered, suddenly feeling guilty for inviting Meredith in the first place. “We can add ‘goes to a wedding to look for magic’ to the long list of reasons why he should be running for the hills right now.”

That brought a slight smile to Meredith’s face. “No, don’t take Owen. I’ll go.”

“You will?” Amelia asked happily.

“Someone has to stop you from making a fool of yourself,” Meredith said. “And it might be nice to get away for a day.”

 

“Under a bridge…interesting,” Amelia remarked.

It was a warm Saturday in September, and she and Meredith had arrived at Stone and Cassandra’s wedding. The wedding was to be held just outside the Annex. A makeshift aisle had been set up between the Annex door and the archway of white flowers that stood on the lawn, chairs lining either side. What was to be the reception had been set up under the adjacent trees with round tables and small lights strung among the lower-hanging branches. People milled about among the chairs as the ceremony would be starting soon. It was small but beautiful.

“It’s pretty, though,” Meredith said, taking in the sights.

“I wonder what’s in there,” Amelia said, gesturing to the Annex door where Cassandra would, presumably, be making her entrance.

“Easy, tiger…” Meredith mumbled.

Stone noticed the doctors from across the lawn and made his way over to them. “Dr. Shepherd,” he greeted. “I’m glad you made it, and Dr. Grey, it’s nice to see you, too.”

“Congratulations,” Meredith said.

“Don’t you look dapper,” Amelia noticed.

Stone adjusted his tie. “I’m not much of a suit guy, but I think this is working for me.”

“Definitely,” Amelia agreed.

“Thanks for coming,” Stone said. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“Oh, no, thanks for proving me right,” Amelia replied. “Just answer me one thing…when did you finally grow a pair and kiss her?”

Stone laughed, completely caught off guard by the doctor’s blunt question. Before he could answer, a look of realization crossed his face. “That’s why you kicked me out of the room at the four-month follow-up,” he said. “You were askin’ Cassie about me?”

“Guilty as charged,” Amelia admitted. “She didn’t tell you?”

“She just told me it was girl stuff,” he said. “I assumed it was…medically girly.”

Amelia grinned at Stone’s obvious discomfort. “Not really my area,” she said. “So, come on, _spill_.”

He laughed again, a little embarrassed, and said, “It, uh...was actually right after that appointment, in the elevator on the way out. It’s not much of a romantic first kiss story, but…”

His words were drowned out by Meredith’s cackling and Amelia’s hearty laughter. Meredith was laughing so hard, she clapped her hands together, and Stone looked confused.

“Alright, what am I missin’?” he asked.

“That’s the elevator that makes everybody horny!” Meredith exclaimed.

“I heard stories about that elevator long before I ever stepped foot in that hospital,” Amelia added.

The look on Stone’s face upon hearing that made the ladies laugh harder, and luckily for Stone, Ezekiel wandered over and saved the day.

“Hey,” Ezekiel said, grabbing Stone’s shoulders. “You ready?”

“Yes, please,” Stone said, a little mortified by what the doctors had just said to him.

“Hey, Dr. Shep!” Ezekiel said.

“Ezekiel,” Amelia said with a nod.

“Let’s go,” Ezekiel said to Stone.

“Cassie doesn’t know I invited you, so…fair warnin’…she might be pretty excited when she sees you,” Stone said. “We’ll catch up with you later.”

“Good luck,” Meredith said. Amelia shot her a strange look, and Meredith shrugged.

“Thanks,” Stone said.

He followed Ezekiel to the front of the aisle and took his place next to Baird, who was serving as Stone’s Best Man, a title she insisted upon keeping despite her gender. Ezekiel stood on what would be Cassandra’s side as Cassandra’s Best Man, a title he insisted upon keeping as he _was_ , in fact, the best man, and Flynn stood in between them, ready to perform the ceremony. The only one missing was Jenkins, who remained inside the Annex, as Cassandra had sweet talked him into walking her down the aisle.

“In the elevator…” Meredith repeated with a laugh as she and Amelia headed to their seats with the other guests. “Hey, maybe there’s your magic.”

“Easy, tiger…” Amelia mimicked, pushing her into a row of seats.

 

After the wedding, Cassandra stood near her table under the large oak tree; it was the table where she and Stone had been greeting guests since the ceremony ended, but Stone had slipped away to talk to an old friend from Oklahoma, and no one seemed to want her attention at that particular moment, leaving her alone with her thoughts. A large arrangement of white roses sat at the center of the table, and she looked at them with a frown. The magazines had warned her that there would probably be something about her wedding that she would end up less-than-thrilled about, and apparently, the color of the flowers was going to be her thing.

The pure white of the roses clashed with her dress, she thought. Her dress wasn’t traditional. It was short, the hem brushing her knees, with a champagne lining and cream-colored overlay. The dress was covered in gold appliqué leaves and flowers. Her up-do hairstyle was fastened in place with a matching gold accessory, and the white flowers on her table just weren’t working for her at the event like they had in the store. Cassandra spent a few seconds with her back turned to the party, staring at the flowers and wishing she had chosen the colored ones instead when she cautiously glanced over each of her shoulders.

No one was too close to her, so she held her hand out in front of the flowers, keeping her arm close to her chest, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes, visualizing a vase full of pink roses instead. She opened her eyes after a few moments, smiling with excitement when she saw pink radiating from the base of the flowers like pink flames dancing towards the top of the petals, slowly filling the offending flora with the desired color.

Before she could finish, however, Stone came up directly behind her and grabbed her waist. Startled, Cassandra jumped and dropped her hand, breaking the spell and leaving the roses a mix of pink and white. She rolled her eyes, silently lamenting the slow speed at which her enchantments were usually performed. Deciding to push thoughts of her magical education aside, she turned around. Stone’s arms instantly encircled her waist.

“Hi, handsome,” Cassandra said brightly.

“Mrs. Stone,” he said in a low voice.

“Mr. Cillian,” she countered, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

He chuckled and pulled her in close, pressing their bodies together. “I could get used to that,” he said. “Did I scare ya?”

“A little,” she admitted.

"Lost in thought?” he asked.

“Just…taking it all in,” Cassandra said. “Good memories, you know?”

He leaned in for a kiss, which she gladly returned, her hands coming to cup his face in her palms. After three tender kisses, their mouths lingered until he felt her smile against his lips and take a step back. Stone opened his eyes and noticed the roses behind his bride.

“Whoa, these are wild-lookin’,” he said, pulling one of the half-pink, half-white roses out of the vase. Cassandra opened her mouth as if expecting to have an explanation demanded from her, but all Stone said was, “Where’d you find these?”

“Oh, just…at a florist in town,” she replied. She took the rose from his hands and laid it on the table behind her face. She playfully scrunched her face and said, “It’s not important.”

He kissed her again, and this time, when they pulled away, she noticed Amelia Shepherd and Meredith Grey walking towards her. Cassandra let out an excited squeal and hurried over to her doctors, immediately hugging Amelia.

“Oh, hey,” Amelia said, thrown off by Cassandra’s affection once again. “You look beautiful.”

“The whole wedding was beautiful,” Meredith said, giving Cassandra a hug as well.

“I thought I saw you guys!” Cassandra said. “I didn’t know Jacob invited you.”

“Invited _her_ ,” Meredith said. “I’m just the date.”

“Well, I’m glad you managed to tear yourselves away from the hospital,” Cassandra said. “Even if I didn’t know you were coming.”

Stone joined them and, as he wrapped an arm around Cassandra’s waist said, “Well, she’s kind of important.”

"That she is,” Cassandra smiled. She looked at Amelia and nodded towards Stone. “He finally kissed me.”

“I heard,” Amelia said. “In the hospital’s magic elevator.”

Cassandra’s face suddenly changed, and she looked warily over at her new husband. “You…have a magic elevator in Grey Sloan Memorial?”

“It’s not literally magic, darlin’,” Stone whispered.

“Yeah, not like that necklace,” Amelia said.

Amelia glanced at Meredith, who she had collected ten dollars from during the ceremony, and Meredith rolled her eyes. Cassandra chuckled nervously and clutched the amulet in her hand.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were together at the appointment last spring,” Amelia continued.

Cassandra laughed at Amelia’s show of false offense; she had gone to the one-year post-surgical follow-up appointment alone. Cassandra cutely shrugged and said, “You didn’t ask.”

She held out her hand to let Amelia see the vintage engagement ring Stone had given her shortly after that appointment. She didn’t notice the older, well-dressed couple walking towards them until it was too late.

“Excuse me,” the man said. “We couldn’t help but overhear. Did you say you know them from a hospital?”

Before Amelia was able to catch the look on Cassandra’s face, she held out her hand for an introduction and said, “Dr. Amelia Shepherd; I’m Cassandra’s neurosurgeon.”

“Oh god…” Cassandra whispered as the man shook Amelia’s hand.

Amelia noticed Stone’s clenched jaw and the utter look of dread on Cassandra’s face and glanced at Meredith in trepidation. Meredith quickly cringed, knowing Amelia had apparently just said the wrong thing.

“Cassandra’s _neurosurgeon_?” the woman asked in surprise, turning to the woman in question. She pronounced Cassandra’s name with the long version of the middle syllable, eliciting an eye roll from Cassandra.

“That’s what she said,” Cassandra confirmed in a sassy tone.

“You had neurosurgery?” the man asked with obvious disapproval.

“Ah-huh…” Cassandra nodded.

“On an inoperable tumor?” he asked.

“Turns out it wasn’t so inoperable after all,” Cassandra said.

The man and the woman shared a look before they both turned their attention to Amelia. Their faces were both rather unreadable, but neither looked terribly happy.

“How much of the tumor did you resect?” the man asked.

“Umm…” Amelia faltered, not willing to just hand out Cassandra’s medical history to anyone. “I’m not really at liberty to…”

“All of it,” Cassandra said in a flippant tone, wanting no part of the current conversation. “She got all of it.”

“There’s no tumor anymore?” the woman asked.

“Nope,” Cassandra replied with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“When did this happen, Cassandra?” she asked.

“Oh, about a year and a half ago,” Cassandra said. “Almost _exactly_ a year and a half ago, I think.”

The man and the woman shared another look, and the man took a step back, as if he just couldn’t bring himself to deal with the situation. The woman put on a forced smile and said, “Cassandra, can I talk to you over here, please?”

Cassandra reluctantly shuffled over a few feet to converse with the older couple alone, leaving Stone with Amelia and Meredith.

“What did I do?” Amelia asked quickly.

“Those are her parents,” Stone said.

"She has parents?” Amelia asked with surprise. “I mean, of course she has…I kind of assumed they were dead.”

Their conversation trailed off as the rapidly rising voices from a few feet over pulled their attention. Cassandra was standing in front of her parents, arms crossed and looking anywhere but at them. Despite the wedding dress, she looked like a teenager who’d just gotten into trouble. Her father’s arms were sternly crossed in anger, while her mother looked to be doing most of the berating of her daughter.

“You’ve been tumor-free for over a year, and you’re…here…working in a library?” her mother asked, voice dripping with disdain. “All that intelligence…all that potential, and you’re wasting it in a library.”

“I like it here,” Cassandra replied.

“And _him_ …” her mother continued, pointing at Stone.

Cassandra stood up a little bit straighter, rage pooling in her blood. “What exactly is wrong with him?” she asked.

“He’s just…a simple man from Oklahoma…” her mother said, a sense of superiority dripping from her voice.

A few feet away, Amelia, who held a very high opinion of the man standing in front of her, looked a little shocked.

“How can they not like you? Seriously?” Amelia asked quietly, glancing at Stone.

“I only met them two days ago, but I don’t think they like Cassandra very much, either,” Stone admitted.

They turned back to the other conversation on the lawn, where Cassandra audibly huffed and angrily looked away.

“He’s just…not who we pictured you with, that’s all. You don’t have to get upset,” her mother finished. “And what are you wearing? I mean, that necklace? _Honestly_ , Cassandra, this is your _wedding_.”

“Don’t get upset…” Cassandra mumbled to herself in disbelief. She looked at her mother again and said, “I _love_ him.”

Her mother sighed. “I know you do, dear, but Jacob and this place and this job…you were supposed to be better than this, Cassandra. You were supposed to be extraordinary.”

At this, Meredith groaned and quietly said, “Please tell me there’s a bar in this place?”

“Over there,” Stone said, pointing to a table near where people were dancing, none the wiser to the drama going on on the other side of the lawn.

“Why?” Amelia asked.

“I’m having Ellis Grey flashbacks. Excuse me,” Meredith said, slipping away.

Cassandra’s mother’s voice grew louder as she said, “It was one thing when we thought you had a tumor, but to come here and find out you had surgery _a year ago_ …”

Across the lawn, Amelia’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she looked at Stone and said, “They didn’t know _at all_?”

“She hadn’t been able to tell them,” Stone said.

“Why?” Amelia asked as Meredith returned with the largest drink she could procure in her hands. “Good god, Meredith.”

“Dead husband _plus_ Ellis Grey?” Meredith reminded her.

“I’ll drive home,” Amelia agreed. She turned back to Stone and repeated, “Why?”

“Well…she…knew they’d react like this,” Stone said.

“Should someone go save her?” Meredith pondered.

“I tried that after dinner the other night,” Stone said. “I ended up gettin’ a lecture on etiquette and interrupting from her pop over there.”

A few feet away, Cassandra’s mother continued. “You have to understand how disappointing this is for us, to see you _choosing_ to throw your life away. You should’ve called us after the surgery; we could’ve helped you get somewhere more…appropriate. We still could, if you would just…”

“ _Stop it_!” Cassandra screamed.

She drew the attention of nearly everyone at the small reception. Baird and Flynn, who were happily dancing, stopped and turned to watch with worry and sympathy. Ezekiel stood from his place at his table, instinctively moving a few steps closer to Cassandra, and even Jenkins, who was doing his best to separate himself from the festivities, looked on with concern.

“Cassandra, keep your voice down,” her mother said upon noticing the stares of the other guests. She continued to pronounce Cassandra’s name with the long second syllable, despite Cassandra’s obvious distaste for it.

“You are not going to do this. You are not going to do this today or…or ever. You guys don’t know what’s best for me. If you knew what was best for me, you would’ve just _held me_ when I was handed a death sentence at fifteen instead of throwing your terminal daughter’s trophies literally out of a second-story window!” Cassandra screamed. “And _you_ , not Ezekiel, would’ve been the ones moving pyramids to help me, and _you_ , not Stone and Colonel Baird, would’ve been the ones taking care of me after the craniotomy, and _you_ , not Flynn, would’ve been the ones making sure I had everything I needed, and then maybe you and _not_ Jenkins could’ve walked me down the aisle today. That all should’ve been you! That shouldn’t have been people I’d only known for a year, so you are going to be gracious to my friends, and you are going to be _appreciative_ of the woman _they_ found to save my life, and you are going to be nice to me, or…or you are going to leave!”

Mother and daughter stood in silence for a few moments after Cassandra’s outburst before her mother turned, walked a few paces to her table, and began collecting her belongings. Cassandra scoffed in disbelief and crossed her arms against her chest again as she realized they were choosing to leave.

“Cassandra,” her mother said coolly as she walked by, not even slowing down as she passed. Cassandra shot her a fake smile, and then looked towards her father.

“Call us if you change your mind,” he said, touching her shoulders.

Cassandra bristled at the contact and mumbled, “Not likely,” as he, too, walked away.

She stood by herself on the lawn for a few moments, utterly humiliated by the scene she had just caused before returning to Stone and her doctors. When she started moving towards them, everyone went back to what they had been doing before the explosion, and everything returned to normal.

Stone immediately pulled her into a hug when she got within reach of him, and Cassandra sighed, letting herself melt into his embrace.

“I made a scene,” Cassandra mumbled.

“Yeah,” Stone sighed.

“They couldn’t do it,” she said. “They couldn’t even do it for one day…”

“I know; I’m sorry. I’m sorry I insisted on invitin’ them at all,” Stone said. He pulled back slightly and held Cassandra’s face in his palm. “Don’t let them ruin today, though, okay?”

Cassandra nodded, and Stone gently pecked her lips. She smiled sadly, and Stone kept his arm firmly around her as Cassandra turned back to Amelia and Meredith.

“I’m so sorry,” Amelia said. “I had no idea…”

Cassandra cut her off. “I should’ve told them a long time ago; that was inevitable,” she said. “I’m just sorry you all had to witness it.”

“Welcome to the club,” Meredith said.

“The club?” Cassandra asked.

“The Bad Mommy Club,” Meredith said.

"Ellis Grey was…like that?” Cassandra asked.

“Right down to the ‘you were supposed to be extraordinary, Meredith,’” Meredith said, mimicking her mother’s tone.

“You named your daughter after that bad mommy,” Amelia pointed out.

“I had my reasons,” Meredith replied.

“So how do you handle being in this club?” Cassandra asked.

"You deal with it in whatever way best preserves your self-esteem and hope to whatever god you believe in that you can make that carousel stop turning if you’re ever on the other side of it,” Meredith said, swallowing the last bit of her drink.

At that, Stone gently nudged Cassandra, and she glanced up at him with an playful grin. Meredith held up her empty glass and shook it around a bit.

“Tequila and gin help, too,” Meredith added.

“Don’t advocate drug use to my patient,” Amelia joked.

Cassandra laughed and hugged Stone a little bit tighter, and, just like that, the blowup that kicked off her reception was forgotten.

 

As the night was winding down a few hours later, Amelia stood in the middle of the lawn, quietly taking in her surroundings. One of Stone’s little nephews had taken a liking to Meredith; she had spent the last several songs dancing with the little boy, a cowboy hat on her head. Baird was keeping a close eye on Ezekiel, having caught him slyly peering into gift bags and women’s purses earlier that evening, and Stone was chatting with Flynn by the bar. The current song ended, and Amelia looked to Meredith, gesturing with a nod of her head to ask if she was ready to leave. Meredith signaled back to her that she wanted one more song, and Amelia nodded, looking for Cassandra.

Amelia hadn’t gotten any closer to having her questions about the regular happenings in the lives or careers of her former patient and her friends answered, and while she still wondered what the now-locked building Cassandra had come out of was, she was beginning to accept that maybe Meredith was right. Maybe her hunches were wrong, and there was nothing unusual at all going on. She was ready to accept that hypothesis, that is, until she found Cassandra sitting still and silent at the table under the old oak tree, chin in her palm, her mind obviously elsewhere. Amelia’s brow narrowed in contemplation as she observed the sights around the bride. She was sitting next to the vase of the pink flame roses, and the string of lights directly above Cassandra’s head were blinking in rainbow colors, a noticeable departure from all of the other lights at the party that were only twinkling white.

Cassandra noticed the doctor walking towards her, and Amelia gave her a little wave. Cassandra smiled and stood as Amelia approached.

“Hey,” Amelia said. “We’re heading out.”

“Thanks for coming,” Cassandra said.

“Are you alright?” Amelia asked.

“Yeah, this day was just…a little more of an emotional roller coaster than I expected,” Cassandra said with an embarrassed chuckle.

Cassandra took a few steps towards Amelia, walking away from the table she had been sitting at, and, as they hugged again, Amelia’s eyes widened. The lights that Cassandra had been sitting under, the lights that had been blinking in rainbow colors when she was lost in thought underneath them, were no longer colored and instead twinkling white just like all the others.

When they pulled apart, Amelia tried to will herself to walk away, but curiosity got the better of her. She hesitated for just a second before saying, “Okay, I’ve got to ask…”

“What?” Cassandra asked.

“Between you and me…and I won’t tell anyone…that amulet,” Amelia said. Rather than instantly clutching it like she normally did when it was mentioned, Cassandra stood still, hands folded calmly in front of her. Amelia, unsure of how to best word what she was asking, finally said, “It’s not _modeled after_ the original, is it?”

“Not exactly,” Cassandra said.

“You’re never going to need my services again, are you?” Amelia asked.

"No,” Cassandra said, confidently and calmly. Remembering there were no guarantees with magic, she shook her head a bit and amended her statement. “At least…I hope not.”

Amelia felt a little disorientated, her suspicions a little bit confirmed. She glanced around in wonder at the multi-colored flowers and the lights and said, “And you’re not really a librarian, are you?”

“Oh no,” Cassandra said, nodding. “I am. It’s just…”

“Is this one those I’d-tell-you-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you things?” Amelia asked off of Cassandra’s hesitation.

Cassandra laughed. “No,” she said. “It’s just a special kind of library.”

“In there?” Amelia asked, pointing to the entrance to the Annex. Cassandra nodded slowly, her lips pressed together. “Magic…magic’s _real_?”

Cassandra repeated the slow nod, remaining silent, lest she give away any more information than she already had.

Amelia let out a breath and shook her head in disbelief. Her mind was swimming with more questions than she knew how to ask, and she noticed Stone rapidly making his way over to Cassandra, so Amelia simply grinned and settled with, “Cool.”

 

_You know what they say. If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life…or until it’s too late. So go ahead. Sign the papers; have the surgery; fly off the cliff; take that leap. You never know…you might end up exactly where you’re supposed to be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see Cassandra's dress - http://chotronette.tumblr.com/post/110186421857/www-chotronette-com  
> I saw that on Tumblr and immediately thought of Cassie. 
> 
> And we've reached the end of this (not so) little story! This is the first time I've written something this long in a loooong time, and this was my first substantial story in either of these fandoms, so I am so grateful to all of the kudos, comments, and feedback you guys have given me! Thanks so much for coming on this ride with me :)


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